


Ten Days

by thereisalwaysroom



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: 1980s, Blow Jobs, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Bliss, Exploration, Fooling Around, Grinding, Hand Jobs, Kissing, Longing, M/M, Oliver is a bit shy, Rimming, Romantic Fluff, Sexual Tension, Sharing Clothes, Skinny Dipping, Soft Boys, That Dusty Mattress, You Want Feels With That?, because I have the most maudlin heartstrings, could this get any more indulgent, smut with feelings, switching tops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-05-15 17:32:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14794859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereisalwaysroom/pseuds/thereisalwaysroom
Summary: "I was barely an inch away from that which kept him alive and breathing and wanting and mine. I could hear it, feel it, tapping quietly to me through the wall of his ribs and skin and blood, as though in morse code, his secrets.Kiss me. Touch me. Gently, gently, gently…"In which the boys are given their moments.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few weeks ago, we had the CMBYN 10 Minute Challenge, and I whipped up the first part of this. I'd just finished the book and got to thinking about those ten days the boys had, and how little of it we got to see in the film. What follows is my intensely indulgent attempt to fill in those ten days, bending and blending the film and book canon as we go.

   I don’t know what I’d expected when I woke at last, to the sight of him slipping out of his shirt. I caught the faded yellowing of the bruise that caressed his hip as he knelt down, pressing his lips to the line of my chest. Between my eagerness and impetuousness and creeping, lingering shame, it had all gone awfully pear-shaped.  Now, he held me. He kissed me. He whispered to me on this same dusty mattress, where less than a full day ago, I kissed Marzia, laid her down and pressed my tongue inside her. I clung to him, skin everywhere, and longed to be closer.  

   Reading my thoughts, or my movements, or obeying the part of him that was me, Oliver pressed me back with the gentlest of nudges - he could have cast a breath, and I’d have toppled. I was his. Powerless, completely owned.   I was sticky with dried cum and peach juice. He didn’t mind, or didn’t seem to let on that he did. He lay next to me, slid a wide hand over my tummy to my hip, pulled me flush to him. He hooked his top leg between mine, slotted his chin on my shoulder, breath whistling almost imperceptibly through his nose as he kissed a wet line up my jaw to my ear again. 

   “It’s okay,” he breathed, like a sigh, and a rush of euphoria pooled from my scalp all the way down the back of my neck. I felt myself go boneless in his arms, both of which were around me this time. Protector. Lover. _Oliver_.

   I could feel him still half-hard against my hip, softening with each breath. I felt a pang of self-loathing - _you killed the mood, asshole_ , I thought savagely, wanting to slap myself, but he didn’t seem remotely interested in doing anything other than cradling me, kissing my temples, my cheeks, the line of my throat. His top hand rubbed circles over my flanks, the one round my shoulders keeping me tucked close.  

   We were in deep. I knew. He knew. I wanted to melt into his bones. Take his body and slip inside. I wanted to worship and be worshipped, as him. Take my body, useless as a bag of sticks, give it to him to repurpose, whilst I wore him like a cloak - his name, his swagger, his gentle, gentle heart.

   He made a soft noise, kissed my cheek again, snuggled his face against my neck. I cuddled his arm like some childhood toy I was loathe to let go of, stroking over the delicate gold wire of his arm hair, thrown into shining contrast by the late afternoon sun that poured in through the tiny circular window. I felt his lips curve into a smile. I’d stopped crying.   I ran my hand up the length of his top arm, and he nosed my ear. I squirmed, turning to face him properly, and his eyes were cast brighter in the half-light of the attic. He was beautiful like this, unclouded by the dark. His eyes were so, so blue, and I wanted then to dive into those two bright, clear pools, as though doing so would illuminate the rest of him the way nothing else could. 

   I kissed him. I did not close my eyes. I think he was expecting a short peck, because I felt him start to draw back, but when I followed, he leaned in - desire looked better on him than even my favorite green suit. He cupped my hip, his bottom arm wrapping around my neck and shoulders, pulling me closer as he was wont to do when the temperature rose between us. I slid a thigh over his hip, rolled on top, nearly taking us both off the mattress. I threw out a hand to steady us, the huff of his laughter breaking us apart momentarily. 

   Seeing the affection in his eyes was like being splashed with ice water. It stunned me, gripped me, the world condensed into a sharp point. I relished it, still half-sure he was teasing - I would have, I had, why wouldn’t he? He was a part of me, and I part of him, and yet I know it wasn’t the case. I was enough like him to know, to see the tiny door to his tender heart creaked open, the way it had that afternoon.

_Do you know how happy I am?_ he’d said, just a boy grown tall in that blue tee and yellow shorts. _Do you know how happy I am?_

   I sank into his lap. His hands skimmed up my flanks, just a petting, not a prelude. I felt small, caught between his hands, like a moth cupped in a child’s palms. Right hand still dug into the mattress, I let my left come up, tracing the line of his nose, my thumb resting on his lip. He closed his eyes, let me do as I pleased, tilting his face into my touch. I was reminded of the plump marmalade feline from the town square who had so gussied up to me on a walk with my mother.  The gentle tickling of his breath over my hands, the prod of his nose against my palm, all of it made that tingling in the base of my skull rush downward into my groin. 

   I ran my hand down the line of his throat, dipping into the quiet divots of his collarbones, like I was sculpting him myself, caught in the process of imagining and discovering his figure from a dream inside my heart. He stroked the length of my thighs, and seemed utterly content to lay there, submitted to my mercy. He let me explore, lips parting as I skimmed my hands along the white spans of his inner arms. His breath caught as I caressed his ribcage - ticklish. It was unbearably sexy to hear the quiet sigh of, “Ohhh,” as I curled my fingers in his chest hair, his fingers digging into my skin. On instinct and curiosity, I rolled my hips in a long, lazy wave. 

   His body responded at once. I felt him pulse against my thigh, proud flesh turned hard. I spoke his name, melted forward, all but fell against his chest, finding his mouth thankfully open and waiting. I kissed him, and in it found myself trying to push open a door I feared had closed, even as we were both hot and wanting already.  

   I didn’t fear his rejection. I was afraid to look at the marks of my own. I did not want to think I had almost not wanted him that morning. I did not want to think about how I had pushed him away, when he’d finally not just allowed me closer, but stepped in himself. When he had ceased to be a man I’d dreamed of, and become a man to hold. A person. Not just Oliver, but _my_ Oliver. Not just  _Oliver_ , but _me_.  

   I threaded my fingers into his hair, and his tongue traced the line of my lower lip. I sucked, toying with him - his body rocked against me, like his lust was some unstoppable physical force. Measurable, defined, reactive. Oh, to have uncovered it myself.  I tugged gently at his hair, and was rewarded with a purr, deep in his chest. I felt it rumble in my ribs, like I’d made it myself. I might have. I, him, we, me. 

   I dragged my fingers down his shoulders, over his arms, flicking my tongue into his mouth and feeling him lift his head, searching for my lips when I pulled away. My hands now braced against his chest, I worked my way down his body, kissed his neck as he had mine. Now his hands were in my hair, clenching and unclenching, never enough to hurt. Like he was trying to realign himself, overcome by that electrical pulse of _I want, I want, I want you_.   I licked over the hollow at the base of his throat. His breath, deep and rhythmic as the sea, stuttered as I did so. I ran the flats of my fingertips over his nipples. His cock jumped like I’d pulled the strings.

   “Goose,” he whispered, voice frayed at the edges. I think he felt my self-satisfied smirk against his skin. Maybe I’d laughed. Maybe he knew my thoughts, because they were his thoughts. Maybe. His voice brought back those words he’d said earlier, with careful, uncovered honesty. _Sick of me. Messed you up. Of course you don’t know. Regret anything._

   I thought of how afraid he’d been, how he’d sounded. I hadn’t thought to picture such feeling on him. But he’d watched me crumple up the picture of our bliss like a bad transcription, like a piece played more ethereal and beautiful in my head. Of course he’d been scared, and he’d spoken anyway.  

   My mouth twitched as I nuzzled dusting of hair over his heart. I pressed my lips right over it, and the blood ran thick behind my eyes. My throat tightened. I was barely an inch away from that which kept him alive and breathing and wanting and _mine_. I could hear it, feel it, tapping quietly to me through the wall of his ribs and skin and blood, as though in morse code _,_ his secrets _. Kiss me. Touch me. Gently, gently, gently…_  

   Tears welled in my eyes again. I screwed them even tighter shut. I wanted to hold his heart in my hands and kiss away the bruises I’d so eagerly doled out this morning, caught up in the cruelty of my own angst. I’d dropped something he’d given to me to hold, and yet he’d dusted it off and given it to me again. It was as though I could see his hands trembling as they stretched out to me - aching, longing, and wary. _Shy_.

   His wide palms were on my face, tipping me to the side so my cheek rested on his chest. Our eyes met. His thumb brushed a stray tear from my cheek, and the concern was back. It made my heart thunder with guilt, drowning out any words I might think to say. What could I? To look at him was to speak to him.

   He read it in my eyes. Something between _forgive me_ and _love me_ and _how, how, how could you ever give this to me_? He lifted himself up to his forearms, tipped my chin with a finger, and kissed my thoughts away. _Ulliva_. The name in this country’s mouth sounded like the thrum of a pulse, and the heat in my groin returned with the stroke of his tongue.  

   Propped up on his elbows as he was, I could run by right hand down his side, over his hip to slide over his clothed crotch, feeling the damp patch already present just below his hip. I reached under the hem at his thigh, wrapped my fingers around his cock. He was half-hard, heavy, blood-hot in my hand. He hissed on an inbreath, bending his knee to sit up easier, his hips rocking slowly, once, twice. He paused, his fingers coming up to cup my face, instead finding my neck as I covered his lips with mine again. He whispered my name into my own mouth, like an offering, and I threw it back to him. “ _Elio_ …”  

   It was better than, “Please.” He went utterly docile beneath me. I watched the doubt drop from his features like a dozen tiny weights. He’d never looked so young, every worry and concern I had barely even seen before just erased from his face, and I kissed and kissed and kissed him until he arched against me, his prick unyielding and insistent in my hand.   I bumped my forehead gingerly against his, pushing ever so slightly, and he went down, obeying me as I had him earlier. He melted back against the mattress, and I hooked my fingers over the waistband of his shorts and pulled them down over his hips, exposing the paler skin that did not see the sun. I had only glimpsed his tanline once, when I’d caught him changing before a swim, and I loved beholding him in the light as I kissed up his long, tanned legs. Now he was the first one naked, squirming beneath me as I kissed the bruise at his hip, over his tummy, nuzzling the divot of his navel. 

   I coaxed his legs apart further with the graze of a thumb so I could settle between them, cheek brushing over the velvety softness of his sac. I kissed his inner thigh, sucked lightly, and he let out a sound that made the heat in pool in my groin. I pulled off the tender flesh with a satisfying wet suck, watching the jiggle of his skin with a secret smugness. It thrilled and endeared me, knowing that there was still a place I’d found amidst his long, strong limbs where he was still soft.  

   When I finally looked up at him, he’d thrown an arm over his eyes, gnawing his lower lip so hard it was white. It was all I could see of his face. His sudden instinct to hide took me by surprise. I reached up to tickle him in the side, and he jumped, arm coming away to reveal his glowing cheeks, and there was that word again - _shy_.  

   I was so aware of how naked he looked when our eyes met, how open and raw and wanting he was. It was the most erotic sight of my life, to see him just staring wantonly down at me, and I caught his hand in mine. His fingers squeezed awkwardly, a little tentatively, then firmer, grasping to ground himself. I held his hand as I wished to hold his heart.

   His cock lay hard against his belly, curved slightly upward, leaving a small smear of clear fluid by his navel. I took him in hand again, struck by how familiar this seemed, how easy it came, when I’d only had my hand on this part of him for barely more than a few minutes last night. He’d let me touch him, yes, but such had been his enthusiasm for worshipping me, I felt I’d barely had time to have a taste of him before we’d both had enough. I wondered suddenly if  he had been afraid of letting me touch him. Of receiving, of letting me see him any other way than in control.  With him pliant and stretched out before me, I wanted to suck him so bad, I ached. 

   He gave a guttural, “Aha!” when I finally stroked him from base to tip, his free hand coming up again to rub (or cover) his face, his jaw tight, eyes closed. I knew I couldn’t take him all the way into my mouth like he had with me, but I had a mouth that wanted the taste of him in it. I ran my tongue along the underside of the shaft in front of me, one long stripe until I reached the tip. His thighs shook as I wrapped my lips around the head. His face was slack, jaw agape with pleasure, and I saw with a thrill the hand that was not holding mine had darted from his face to his chest, fingertips idly circling a nipple. Watching him lost in pleasure gave me such a rush of satisfied joy, I could have wept with relief.  

   Instead, I used my other free hand to steady his cock, tricky one-handed. I still had little idea what I was doing, had barely been exposed to this act much myself. Before him, I’d had maybe two other moments where anyone, Marzia or otherwise, had deigned to use their mouth on me.   He let go of my hand as I braced myself on a forearm, steadying his prick as best I could, covering what I couldn’t with my mouth with my fingers. I sucked the tip, moved up and down slowly as he had on me before. When I gripped him tight with both hands, squeezing as I stroked, he groaned, a sound that I felt down in my bones. 

   My mouth watered and I licked him all the way up and down. He was using both hands on his nipples now, hips shuddering as he fought to remain still for me. I marveled as how it was still a somewhat strange, out of body sensation to touch him like this, to lick and suck a part of him that had remained as elusive as his steely-eyed stare. I stole a glance upward as his mouth, which had beheld me last night. I wondered how he had felt to taste my cock. Had I felt as heavy? Had I felt as hard? Had he longed to take me in his mouth the way I had, unable to look me in the eye for fear that I might be able to see the same exact thoughts behind his carefully manicured composure?

   Feeling bold, I finally held my breath and tried what he’d done, taking him down and working to swallow. It was a lot, but I loved the ache in my jaw and at the back of my throat - his eyes fluttered shut and he gave a half-cry, his hips canting forward, unable to help himself. I lurched slightly, fighting a cough - too deep - and his hand drifted to the back of my head, pulling slightly on my hair with a breathless huff of, “Easy, easy, easy…”  

   Had I done this the night before, it might have made me sick. Now, as he writhed and stifled his moans into knuckles he bit, taking deep shuddering breaths that made his chest _heave_ above me, I would have been happy to have been struck blind, deaf, or dead. It would have been worth the darkness to end with that sight before me, his precum smeared from my raw lips to my spit-slick chin.  

   When I couldn’t take him anymore without the ache in my jaw or watering eyes giving me pause, I dropped my head to one side, stroking him hard and slow with one hand, the other arm slipping under his thigh, hand caressing the crest of his floating ribs. I could feel the luxurious arch in his back then, and I was so reminded of Marzia on the cusp as she had rolled against my tongue. His eyes were closed, mouth a round, pink o, his brow knit with pleasure, and there was a flush highlighting his collarbones which shamed that in his cheeks.  

   “Elio,” I called, and his eyes opened, locking on me at once, like he sensed my gaze every moment it’d been fixed on him.  

   “Oliver,” he loosed forth in a graveled, wrecked sigh. I could taste his climax in his words.  I lowered my head barely an inch, lay the ring of my lips and teeth against the tender white of his inner thigh, and sucked hard. His back arched and he gave a drawn, muffled sob, hard flesh pulsing in my palm as he quivered and came and came and came.

   Barely seconds later, his hands were on my shoulders, pulling me closer, his fingers slick where they’d dragged through his cum, and I couldn’t tell if it was his fingers in my mouth or his warm, wet tongue, and I’d run out of time to even dream of caring - his fingers scrambled at my suit, pushing it over my hips, hand finding my cock.  

   His touch was like licking a battery, plugging into a live line, a hand stuck in the fire. I was so aroused so suddenly, I couldn’t think. I thrust blindly into his hand, moaning my own name, now his name into his mouth, and his husky, throaty call-and-response of _his-my-our name,_ mixed with the vile sound of his semen-slick hand on my prick - I was undone. I fucked his fist with abandon and felt the curve of my spine bend towards him as I shot my load all over his chest as he had last night, feeling the caress of his hands on my hips, my waist, his gaze fixed on my face with a hunger as palpable as heat.  

   My arms managed to hold me up long enough not to fall on top of him. Instead, I managed to find a comfortable slump along his side, one leg slung over his so that we were somewhat tangled together. He was still panting, drawing breath as long and slow as he could through his open mouth. I could feel the effort to slow his racing heart. I could see, if I held still, the minute _tap-tap_ bounce of his skin where the pulse ran strongest, just at the very heart of his solar plexus.   

   He was made of Favorite Spots. This would always be the Original. I’d find reason after reason later to slide my hand into his shirt and press lightly over the join of his chest and belly, where, above his cock, he was most hotly, tangibly alive.   I rubbed a warm circle over that spot now, and he placed his hand over it, closing his fingers around mine. When I looked up at him again, his gaze was uncloaked, unguarded. It was the look he’d given me first thing this morning, fear and hope and trepidation all in one. But now, post-orgasm, and bereft of the hours in which he’d been allowed to brood, he had no time to hide.  

   I wanted to fold him next to my heart. 

   “Oliver,” I said, and felt the quickening of his nerve beneath my palm, hackles silent raised. I caressed the line of his jaw with my thumb, and still, he was afraid to move. “I don’t want you to go.”  

   Unblemished this time by my tears, I watched the words hit him one by one. The lines around his mouth disappeared. His breath came out in a rush, sharp and sudden as the snap of a dropped book, a book he couldn't pick up. I watched him swallow, and knew he wanted to hold me. I knew I wanted him to.  

   I caught a glimpse of his face as he turned into me - his eyes were shiny and full. It may have been the light. 

   I closed my arms around him, pulled him as near to inside me as I could. 

   “ _It’s okay._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, my dears. If you enjoyed, leave a comment!! I can be found on tumblr as thereisalwaysroom.
> 
> XOXO, L


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the lovely @provenance over on tumblr for her eagle eyes and encouragement. You are a doll. :)

    It was a long time before we could move again.I loathed to let him go, for fear I might break the spell, that he might feel me pull away and assume the worst.It was silly, presumptuous, bordering on paranoid, but the desire to mend his heart was stronger than my lust.Twenty minutes post orgasm was a decent period for lingering tenderness before a tailspin, I’d learned last night.  
  
    Oliver was so lovely to hold.He rubbed my back, hiding his face beneath mine as he had last night, and I cradled him there, safe in the dark, unmoving.“Mmm,” he rumbled, and lifted his face to look at me; his eyes were dry.I felt again that flash of regret, waited for him to throw his day’s collected spite at me.Even riding the waves of afterglow as we were, I’d have wanted to, if I were him.  
  
    “Three times in a day.I guess four, technically, for you.Sometimes I miss being your age.” He laid a kiss in my palm, held it to his cheek.It was the sweetest touch, and an image of him at my age blossomed in my head. I wondered how different he’d looked, young and barefaced.Maybe he’d had long hair.Smoked too many reefers.Maybe he’d been moody and morose, skateboarded and cause all sorts of joyous mayhem.Maybe he’d played baseball.Rowed crew.Kissed girls.Kissed boys.  
  
    “You didn’t seem to have trouble keeping up,” I pointed out.He grinned, and the fist round my heart loosened.   
  
    “True.Not even close to my record, though.”  
  
    “You have a record?”  
  
    “Don’t you?”  
  
    “I don’t know.”  
  
    “Really?Wow, well now I feel —”  
  
     I cut him off with a kiss.  
  
    “I think,” I said lightly, tracing the shell of his ear, “I might have gone…six or seven times in a day?I can’t be sure.”   
  
    “Huh,” he mused.His long fingers caressed my neck, toying with my frayed edges, feeling where I would give.Gauging where he couldsoften.“That's pretty impressive. I think my record’s ten.” My eyebrows shot straight up, and he laughed.The sound made my head spin with happiness."I was young and bored and had entirely too much time on my hands."  
  
    “How old _were_ you?”  
  
    He scowled, thinking.“Nineteen?Maybe twenty.”  
  
    “So not _that_ long ago.”  
  
    “Yeah, not _that_ long ago.  But long enough.”  
  
    I slid my fingers over his scalp.He closed his eyes, turning into my caress.I never dreamed he would accept such a touch.Maybe it was the knowledge we were on borrowed time, caught in a dream, the ocean that would be between us in less than a fortnight already licking our ankles, making us eager to cling to each other in face of the flood.Disaster a catalyst for intimacy.  
  
    He kissed me again, his eyes drunk with post-coital bliss and blue as a ten fathom sea, hair mussed by my attentions.No one could doubt what we’d been doing.“We should clean up and rejoin the world,” he said.  Fair point; our sticky state had morphed from indulgent to more than a little gross.I loved it all the same.“Here.” He picked up his nearby shirt, cleaned himself off, and handed it to me.

“Poor Mafalda,” I sighed, rubbing the semen off my chest as he sat up to find his shorts.I skimmed my fingertips over his back, echoing his touches this morning.Contrary to me, he smoothed his hand over the length of my leg, smiling down at my knees, the dying light haloing his face.I sat up, mouthed at the line of his spine between his shoulder blades, and he leaned his head back, gently connecting with mine.He took my hand, clasped it to his chest, and held me there; my eyes filled with tears I would not shed.

 

~

 

    We managed to head downstairs without being seen.I kept close to him, caught his half glance at me as we came upon the landing, presented again with two doors.I slid my finger into the waistband of his suit, and he rewarded me with such a quiet, boyish smile, I wanted to eat him.

    Inside, I closed both doors behind us.Oliver lingered.Watched me.My eyes flicked to the green shirt he’d worn yesterday when he floated into the parlor, mirage-like, a heat-haze vision of sweat and skin and searing solicitude. 

    Next to it hung Billowy, still secretly imprinted with our invisible vows, like a wedding sheet.While I couldn’t see any stains, it filled me with glee, the thought of sending him downstairs draped in the evidence.After all, he'd chosen to hang it, not wash it.

    I reached up, unhooking the hanger from the closet door.I brought the garment to my face and buried my nose in it.Any traces of Mafalda’s lavender detergent were long gone. 

    I offered it to him.He took it, silent, draped it over his arm, watched as I rifled through his clothes.I picked out a pair of shorts he’d worn into town a few days before, lay them over Billowy, and moved to tug his swimsuit down his legs.He stepped out of it once it dropped round his ankles, and I hung it at the end of my bed.Naked before me, he watched as I took the pair of pants, unbuttoned them, and held them out for him to step into.He was still a moment, then put a hand on my shoulder and slid first right, then left leg into them, I’m sure noting my distinct refusal to choose out any sort of underwear for him.

    I took Billowy from over his arm, shook it out, and dressed him, one sleeve at a time, taking extra care with the collar, tracing a line around the circumference of his neck until my fingers met at the dip of his chest.I did up the buttons, kissing over his heart before I hid it from view. 

    When I was done, I stood back, caught him peering through his lashes at me with an ardent gaze it thrilled me to recognize.He reached down, untied the drawstring of my trunks, pushed them to my feet.He took the yellow trophy hanging on the bedpost, knelt, and tenderly skimmed his fingers over the back of my knee.I caved at once to the pressure, lifted my heel enough for him to slip his hand under my whole foot and cradle it.I steadied myself with a hand on the back of his head as he guided me to step forward, and I was reminded of how he'd kissed the arch of my foot in the privacy of the hallway. I thought that was the closest we'd ever get.

    He nuzzled my navel, rose, and dragged the yellow fabric, rich with him, inch by inch up my legs. He had to pull the drawstring a little tighter than normal, willowy as I was, but they stayed, slung low over my hips.There we stood, barely an inch between us, raw as if we had traded skins.

 

~~

 

    I sat next to him at dinner.At one point, as I wondered if I could get away with shifting anymore in my seat without turning a full ninety degrees to stare at him, he slid his foot underneath mine, mirth tugging at the corner of his mouth **.**

    My father, I'm sure suspecting where my sudden surge of energy came from, bid me play something, and I felt at once alight and eager to please.I’d been given an extra glass of _frizzante_ , and the world felt vibrant and lustrous.Oliver’s watchful eye felt like the imprint of his kisses.I loved showing off.I loved that he loved to watch me. _Ulliva, Ulliva._ Ever generous with his gaze, his praise.I could have lit the moon.

    When the cognac was brought out, Oliver announced he was heading to bed.In the bustle of saying goodnight to our guests, the evening winding down, it was a full ten minutes before I was finally free and the house was quiet.He wasn’t in (now) our room.He wasn’t in mine, either. Sick with it, sure he was hiding, I went looking.

    It didn’t take long.He was outside, reclined by the back garden steps, away from all prying eyes.Just sitting there, arms around himself, staring out at the grounds. A vision of everything I’d ever wanted, cherished and dear and lonely as the star that hung round his neck.

    I crept close, kicked a rock just down the steps in warning so he wouldn’t be startled by me.He turned, and I was relieved to see him smile.“Hey,” he whispered.

    “Hey,” I said, sliding my hand along the hair at his nape, bending to kiss his Adam’s apple.He hummed as I threw my leg over the rocky balustrade.It was close quarters, but he didn’t move as I sat and lifted his legs to drape over mine, teasing the white hint of his tan-line.He swung his heels back, toeing round my ankles.Anchoring me.The silence stretched between us like a song. 

    “I wanted to hold your hand at dinner,” I said. 

    “Did you, now?” 

    “Yeah.Real bad.Should I have?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “I should have.” I ran my hands up and down his thighs.“What are you thinking about?”

    He told me.Classes.His book.Me.I realized then, legs entwined, hearts in our hands like cards, that I'd never been so openly affectionate with him, out in the world where we might have been caught.What did it matter, now?There were so many days behind us.The thought of wasting more made me sick.Even as we kissed, and kissed, and _kissed_ , the preemptive pang of empty-bed, empty-hands threatened to overtake me, and I feared he’d taste the bitterness on my lips. 

    “I can hear you thinking,” he said.“Penny for them?” 

    Now he was asking _me_?He paused his stroking of my arm.“No, don’t stop,” I said, rocking forward and nosing against his jaw.“I…yeah.I’ve been thinking about this morning…”

    “I see.” He raised his hands to caress my face, made me look at him.He could have been my father.He could have been my mirror.“It’s okay.”

    “It’s not.”

    “It is.” Forgiveness in finality.I had to put my face in my hand, the ache in my throat twisting my features.He’d said those words to me so many times today.Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.He leaned in, and I met him in a kiss before I knew what I was doing.Kissing him was coming home. 

    There was a creak from somewhere near my parents’ open window.I could gather what they were doing.I took both of Oliver’s hands in mine.“Can we go upstairs?” I asked.His thumbs traced the blue lines of my veins. A map to my heart.

    “Yes,” he whispered, reverent as a prayer **.**

 

~~

 

    It was surreal to stand at the sink, still in his suit, thinking of how I was about to go to bed with him for the second time.I drummed my fingertips on my hipbones, visible above the yellow waistband. I wondered if I should jump in the shower, if I should go in naked.Now that I faced the mirror, I had to be truthful - I was unbearably sore.There was no way I could take him again, not like that.I had an impulse to hide away and hope he’d forget the whole thing.I wondered, if I stayed in here long enough, when he'd come looking for me.If he would look at all. 

     _It's okay._

    I used his toothbrush. 

    When I tiptoed back into the room, Oliver was standing by my desk, wearing only a pair of boxers, which was strange, as I'd not dressed him in that.He'd chosen to change, to put them on.Even shirtless, it was more fabric than I was used to seeing him in.   Was he covering up again?

    He looked up when the door snicked shut behind me.“Thought you’d gotten lost.”

    “Fell and cracked my head open on the sink.Had to clean up.”

    “Goodness, how dramatic.”

    “Apparently very in character for me.One might even say…. _dramatique_.”

    His chuckle lilted like a charm, and I crossed the distance between us in three steps and threw my arms around him.My cheek tucked against the column of his neck, and his body, malleable as wax, melted round to hold me, his warm lips pressing kisses in my hair and over my forehead.I longed for him to trust my surety.To feel, myself, what surety was.

    Slinging my arms around his hips, I tipped my head back and nipped his chin.Gone was the flagrant uncertainty of earlier, the need to flee, the callous dismissal of the glorious shapes he carved in the air.I was a blasphemer come under the eye of a far too-merciful God.

    He dropped his gaze, glanced back to the bed we’d shared before we’d shared.Even in the dark, he looked pink in the face. _Tesoro_. 

    “Come on.” He moved, edging towards it, sitting down and shifting back so I had the room to get in with him.I lay gingerly, half a foot between us, trying to quash the disquiet brimming to the surface now we were horizontal.

    I wanted to go to him.To hold him and kiss him and be held.The ache in my lower body tempered my eagerness.

    Oliver was looking at me again with that odd mix of wisdom and innocence.He seemed just as nervous to close the gap, every inch a canyon.“Are you alright?” His voice sounded so rich when hushed.

    “Yeah,” I said, entirely too quickly.I'd had him inside me, tasted his cum, seen his face in rapture, completely unburdened in bliss.Yet I was full of a new anxiety.I could not bear to disappoint him more than I already had.

    “ _Oliver_ ,” he whispered, his voice a note so in tune with my heart’s toil, I couldfeel it sing and shatter like a wineglass.I knew I could tell him anything.

    “I…I can’t do what we did last night.”

    “That’s fine,” he said, at once, just as quick as I had been.Oh.“We don’t have to do anything.Ever again, if you don’t want.” Oh, how he could say that after this afternoon, _oh oh oh_.The sincerity in his words whet my yearning even more - I shook my head, and he fell silent, fingertips tracing my neck, playing connect the dots. 

    “That's not what I meant,” I said.“I meant…I mean I want to, I loved it, I swear.I just…I’m a little…”

    “Sore?”

    “…Yeah.”

    He cupped my cheek.“Did you think I’d expect you to do that again tonight?”

    “I…I don’t know.” I searched his eyes for scorn, forgetting there wasn’t a drop in his whole body.

    He let out a breath, bemused, and pulled me into his chest.“Elio, there’s a lot more to it than _just_ _that_ ,” he murmured.“Definitely not an every night thing.Not for me, at least.” 

     _Not for him?_ I wondered. _Had he been in my place before?Under a man, legs spread, a cock filling him up, enough for him to feel the next day?_ The thought made my mouth dry and my skin hot.Like swallowing fire.

    “Sorry,” I croaked.

    “Don’t be.I… I rushed you last night.  Should have taken better care of you.Taken my time.”

    “You took perfectly good care of me.I wanted it. Wanted _you_ so much.”

    “This morning, you could barely walk.”

    “It wasn’t _that_ bad.”

    “Enough that you panicked.”

    “Yeah. So did you.”

    He opened his mouth, closed it, unable to argue.I nestled closer, skimmed my hands up his broad back.I didn’t want him to worry about being seen.I wanted him to know.I wanted to see him.He huffed and moved to look at me, trapping my nose between two knuckles and giving it the tiniest of shakes.“Goose.” 

    “Rahhh hey,” I honked, pushing him off, relief rising in me like a bubble of hot air.“Hit a soft spot?"

    “You're just...perceptive.”

    I moved my hands over his chest.I thought of all the things I wanted to say.How sorry I was.How I’d longed to know what he’d tasted like, how I’d dreamed of this moment before I'd even admitted it to myself.How I had longed for him to come in and curl up with me that one night and read stories, just so I could feel his skin against mine.How I might make it up to him, and him to me, and all the things I wanted him to teach me, how I wondered if there was even one thing in this life I could teach him, the impossibility of that thought - and realized he was looking at me, with all my invisible words held heavy in his mouth.

    “ _Elio_ ,” I said.A plea.

    “ _Oliver_.” A gift.

    He covered my lips with his own, and I tasted the sea, and heat, and me.

_I know myself._

    He slipped into my mouth.Tasting.Teasing.It didn’t surprise me he was such a good kisser; what always thrilled and floored me was his curiosity.The questing probe of his tongue, how he would suck the tip of mine until I tightened my grip in his hair or dug my nails into his shoulder with the need to keep quiet.He kissed like we'd invented the act.

    I traced the sensuous curve of his cupid's bow with my tongue.I'd have done so for hours, if he'd let me.I nibbled along the line jaw, felt his breathing deepen, the air between us growing hot, electric.At one point, I drew back, panting, a thousand languages meaningless in the face of the universal one - friction.

    He didn't try to push me further, instead peppered little kisses all over my face, licked at the corner of my mouth.His fingers came up to my neck again, walking between points only he could see.

    “What’re you doing?”

    “Admiring your beauty marks. They're luscious.” I loved the way he said “beauty.” I loved how he was talking about me.His thumb grazed my chin, my jaw; he tipped my head to one side with a quiet confidence and control that lit something aglow inside me. I purred as he kissed constellations over my skin. 

    “Does that feel good?” he asked softly, his palm stroking circles over my sides and chest.The words wrapped in his voice were so hot, I could barely speak.“Elio?”

    “Hnn?”

    “You still with me?”

    “You trying to kill me?”

    “…No.” 

    “Then please don’t stop.” I could feel the last of the strings which held him back starting to tremor, on the edge of breaking.I took his hand, licked over the lines of his palm, between the webbing of his fingers, sucked two of them into my mouth, teasing them the way I had his cock.He bit back a groan and did the same to me, licking up the length of my wrist, over each knuckle, sucking them with obscene pleasure.I ran my newly slick hand over his face, pulled him to me and kissed him, heated and clumsy and deliciously uninhibited. 

    “I love this, Oliver,” I panted, like I was sprinting toward some blessed precipice of understanding between us, finding the comfort in reframing.Give him my words, give them again, give them the weight they needed, all the ways I’d wanted to say them before.If I could give him the chance for us to start over again and again and again, I would try.But then again, if we hadn’t started the way we did, we might not be here.We might never have at all.

    He melted, relaxed at my words.I tongued between his lips and drank in his sigh like the most unctuoussummer vintage, and felt his cock swell, trapped behind fabric.I dug my heels into the mattress and pressed my hips up into his.Somehow, feeling his warm flesh with that barrier between us was so intensely erotic, a kind of blissful discomfort to have something separating us, when last night we’d been naked in a heartbeat, and yet fumbling for our bearings.I trapped his thigh between mine and rutted against him as he kissed over my neck.I could smell his sweat, grassy, and sharp, and biting as the day's first icy dip.

     As he settled between my legs, my hands slid down his shoulders to his chest, delighting in the catch of his breath as I skimmed knuckles over his nipples. I took them gently between my fingers, massaging and teasing, stroking gently with my thumbs.

    Oliver’s mouth dropped open, his hair falling into his face.He was trembling, his voice so changed from his usual suave, deep, confident baritone.As I caressed him, he gave light taps of sound, emanating from that unknowable place inside him which I strangely knew, bone-deep, I was first to touch.

    “You like that?” I asked, nosing his damp hairline as he pressed into my touch, arched his back and rocked a little.My own voice sounded thick and raspy in my ears, strange and unrecognizable. 

    “Oh, ohhhh, yes.” His voice was heavy with arousal.My whole body thrummed with smugness.

    “It’ll be hell keeping my hands off you now,” I whispered.“Every time I see you with your shirt open, you're a goner.”

    He panted against my neck, grinding slowly against my hip.His cock felt so big and hard and swollen against me.He reared his head back at one point, flushed, _gorgeous_ , fists braced on the mattress, and I took the opportunity to lick both my thumbs before going back to squeezing and rolling and pinching those lovely, sensitive buds.His voice quavered as I did, and I leaned in to take the left one between my lips an give an experimental lick. Encouraged by his guttural sound of approval, I sucked, worrying it with my teeth. He keened and arched, head tipping back. Emboldened, I bit harder, sucked harder, flicking my tongue as I pinched the other nub of flesh between my finger and thumb and pulled. He _buckled_ , gave a gasping cry, and grabbed my wrists to stop me. 

    “Sorry, not good?”

    “Oh fuck, _ohhh_ _fuck._  So good, it was almost over.”

    My cock pulsed, hearing him swear like that, and I shivered.  I'd almost made him come.I had to see that.Someday.Before he left.

     I smoothed my hands down his flanks, giving him time to calm.I wanted to ask so many things, so many specifics, what else could we do, what did he expect, what had he done, what did he want, but as I looked into his dazed and sweaty face, what came out was, “Are you having fun?”

    I hated myself at once for the question.  It sounded so juvenile, so stupid.My whole body wanted to dry up, a husk of humiliation; I couldn’t bear to look at him, see the ridicule in his face.

     But he looked down at me with his messy hair and his glassy eyes, his lips kiss-bitten and red - and he _glowed_.Lit up. 

    “ _Yes_ ,” he said, with such outward, blatant joy, it pierced me.He scooped me up in his arms and into his lap, bringing us both upright, and his mouth was everywhere, kissing me all over. I couldn’t tell if one or both of us were laughing or babbling or crying, butI could taste salt, and didn't care if it was spit or sweat or cum or tears. 

    He clung to me, rubbed his face against my shoulder, hugged me so sweetly, it stung."Are _you_ having fun?”

    “Yes,” I said, loud and clear for him.I was done teasing for now.Straddling his lap, I nipped at his neck, toying with the idea of leaving a mark, dark and visible to all, a statement at the breakfast table as striking and perverse as him strutting down in my swim trunks.I sucked at his skin, and he ran his big hands over my ass, cupping me, giving me a squeeze. 

    “Ah!” I hissed, bit down, unable to keep from grimacing.Now _that_ smarted.He froze.

    “Sorry, I'm sorry.You really did take it hard.”

    “It’s not bad.I swear.”

    “Mm.” He rubbed my hips, kissed up my jaw to my ear, the sensual, deep waves of his breath enough to make me dizzy with lust. **“** I want to kiss you there. **”**

I wasn’t sure I’d heard right.“Wha-“ He cut me off, sliding his thumb over my lips, offering me a finger to suck, which I eagerly did.He brought his hand down, dipping below my waistband, down to graze the slick pad of his index over that raw, unignorable spot that made my nerves sing with mingled pain and pleasure.

    “Oliver, _Oliver_ , oh god,” I gasped, wanting whatever he could give, trapped between needing to pull away and reaching down to force him deeper, pain be damned.

    I gripped his hip to steady myself, palm coming to press over the inflamed mark on his side - he groaned and I felt his jaw clench against my cheek, both of us so riled up in each other’s sweet agony, I was sure I'd hit the roof.

_Take my pain_ , I thought. _Give me yours to carry, Oliver.It was always mine to begin with._

    He cupped the swell of my ass again, giving it a little squeeze before slipping his hand out of my shorts andtipping me back to lay on the joined mattresses; my hips rested in his lap, and I could feel the insistent prod of his cock right up against the crease of my groin.He made no move to touch himself, though, his focus narrowed to one thing - me.I felt giddy, like I might lift up and float away without his long limbs as my tether.

    “Hey,” he said, finding my gaze, lacing one hand into mine that rested on his cheek.“You can call it at any point.”

    “I…huh? Call-“

    “As in, we can stop.”

    “I don’t want to.”

     He kissed my palm. “I gathered.But just so you know.No questions asked, promise.”

    “Oliver, you’re being -“

    “I know,” he said.“I just needed to say it.Because I…” His mouth twisted in a wry grin.“I thought you should know.I wanted you to know.”

    I almost laughed, but the sound caught in my throat, I was so touched.I trusted he saw it in my face that I understood, that I was grateful.He tickled my sides until I squirmed against him, throwing my arms around his shoulders and pulling him in for a long, full body, cheek-to-cheek hug.A loving, lover, loved-one hug.

He sat up, ran his wide, beautiful hands over my tummy, my chest, my hips, and hooked his fingers in my - _his_ \- waistband. 

    “Looks good on you,” he whispered.  "Can I take these off?" 

    I nodded, watching him slide them over my hips, lifting them to help.He unhooked them from my ankle, kissing from my heel all the way down, licking the insides of my knee, down to my inner thighs, moving all the way until my legs draped over his shoulders.I had an image of Marzia again, how I’d done this to her, and I felt caught in the liminal space of wondering if I was just like every girl _he’d_ ever been with.If I was special at all.

    For not the first time, I pictured him between the legs of every girl in B—, his chin slick with betrayal.Now he was kissing over my sac and sliding his hands up to bend my knees and press them toward my chest. 

    Flaying me alive couldn’t have left me more exposed.When I felt his lips press a kiss over my bruised and aching rim, I had to throw an arm across my mouth and bite down to stifle a cry.

    His tongue was hot and slick against me, tracing circles so slow it was almost too much.It made my insides quiver uncontrollably, and yet I couldn’t help but cant my hips toward his mouth and try to spread my legs further, whimpering as he drew a wet stripe up to my balls, which he sucked gently, one at a time. 

    He paused and kissed over my sac again.“Does that feel good?” That question again, now a hot whisper against the most intimate of places. 

    “Yes!” I choked, on the edge of begging.“Yes, it feels _so_ good.”

    “More?”

    “Yes, yes please.”

    He gave it to me in spades.His tongue pressed smoothly against my hole, inside with such finesse, my whole body shook.My thighs closed around his ears as I arched, reaching down to grip my own cock, instinctively galloping to the edge he was teasing me toward.My world was neon and sharp, the only forces in it his warm, wet mouth, and fuck, _oh fuck_ , one slick finger that had worked its way inside and pressed upward so deftly, I saw stars.

    I couldn’t stop now, mortified, knowing I couldn’t last much longer.I felt his shoulder moving beneath my leg in a rhythm which was at once all his own and familiar as my own face.I knew what he was doing, and it fanned the fire inside me to an outright blaze.Even one finger inside me, moving slow, was just on this side of too much, and not enough, and so, so good. When he bent it at the knuckle, I was done for, biting into my arm with a cry as I came hard enough to make my hearing go fuzzy. 

    I didn’t catch his echoing groan right away, only the heat of his mouth pressed against me as I clamped down around him; he rocked us through the waves of our shared climaxes.I felt faint as he came up, knowing I should give him the same treatment sooner rather than later, swore I would once feeling returned to my limbs.But when he lay atop me, I felt the damp spot on the fabric at his crotch, and felt a rush of crestfallen relief.I wanted to give him everything, give him all of me, but I could barely move, all my wires and signals and systems recovering from a power surge I'm sure would last til morning.

He moved to hold me and, even now, I could feel him give pause - I would not have it. 

    “Come here,” I whispered, burying my hands in his sweat-damp hair.He obeyed, kissing my forehead- I took his chin and kissed him on the mouth, tasting the mingled sweet-salt of us both on his tongue.  I rustled and tugged at the waistband of his underwear. 

    “Can I take these off?” I asked, words swapped between mouths again.His eyes glittered and he nodded, moving a little so I could peel them off and use them to clean us both before tossing them haphazardly across the room.

    The night air wafting through the window was thick and sweet and tinged with sex.I longed to bottle it, so that I might anoint myself on the days I’d long for him most.His fingers traced circles over my chest as he bent his knees beneath my legs, cradling me to him.Like we’d rehearsed this hundreds of nights in a row, cut of the same cloth. Coming home. 

    I grazed a thumb over his left nipple, tracing the bite mark.“Ah, careful, careful.I'm tender there."

    “I can tell.” He caught my hand in his, sweeping his thumb under my palm, pressing the ball of each finger until he heard the muted "crik!" of each knuckle as they popped. He laid my hand on his chest, caught my glance at my watch.

     "Wh'time you got?" 

    “Quarter to twelve.” I toyed with the star of David at his throat."When's the last time you went five times in a day?"

"Wouldn't you love to know?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, my dears. If you enjoyed, leave a comment!! I can be found on tumblr as thereisalwaysroom. 
> 
> XOXO, L


	3. Chapter 3

 

Oliver woke me early for a swim. So early, in fact, that I’d thought it’d barely been an hour. But there he was, pressing his lips to my shoulder, the roll of his breath against my neck at once bliss and torment. 

“S’too eaaarrrly.” 

“Should I carry you?” 

I turned to face him, kicking free of the sheets, and slung my arms round his neck. “You might have to.”

He chuckled, pressed his open mouth to mine. I brushed his hair back, tightened my fist, gave it a little tug. He made a low sound in his chest, and pressed his open mouth to my throat; I clung to his shoulders, wrapped my legs around his waist, and felt his whole body flex as he lifted me from my nest and into his arms in one great, sweeping heave. I sighed, in wonder, in exasperation, and felt the waistband of his bathing suit where my thighs gripped his hips. 

He needn’t ask. I’d follow him anywhere.

*******

We wore our suits down to the water. We took one bike. Oliver let me balance the short distance on the handlebars until we reached the river clearing, his breath a metronome ticking somewhat off-beat with his pedaling. He nudged me off, drew a line up my back with the tip of a finger before letting the bike rest against the tree nearest us.

He strolled down towards the shore, stripping, nonchalant, revealing all of himself in the not-quite dawn. My eyes naturally fixed on the sharp white line at his hips, and I darted after him, determined to grab a handful of luscious, untanned skin.

He whipped round at the last second (I was a terrible sneak), seized me round the waist, half-stumbling as he threw me into the water.

“Cheeky!” he crowed.

“Choice words, _bastardo_!” I sputtered. He dove in, disappearing under the dark water, until I felt his long fingers claw round my ankle, giving me a tug. I choked on water, coughing even as I laughed and flailed, kicking away, but never too far. The seven year distance between us closed in a heartbeat.

The sky was a dark backdrop behind the house, but off behind the trees to the east lay a horizon awash like bleeding ink, blushing, and secret, and pink _._

It felt holy, to be with him in the in-between. I’d never seen the sky this color. I’d never heard the world wake up, felt the quiet of the morning. I’d never swum naked with anyone.

Oliver. An uncovering.

As I floated on my back, he came up behind me, sank down, pressed his temple to mine, palms cupping my ribs. I wondered if he meant to float beneath me, take my weight, drag us both below. Drown me like some mad river myth. Entwined in the nets of each other, sunk to the bottom, lust-heavy bones good as a pocketful of rocks. _Worse ways to go_ , I mused.

He stood to look down at me. He looked sleepy. There were pillow marks on his face, his eyes a tad puffy, his smile lopsided. _Darling boy_ , I thought, and the word sounded saccharine even in my own head - I wanted to kiss and hold him and bite those lips until they bled.

I flipped over in the water and he darted backward. I gave chase. A few moments of sharks and minnows soon found Oliver clambering onto the center rock while I treaded water.

“Fiend. You’ve escaped for now,” I huffed, reaching down to slip out of my suit at last. I threw it at him, and he caught it one handed. He was stunning, standing there, naked and so unabashed. He wrung out my trunks and made as though to toss them back to shore. “Oh, what, that’s not your trophy?”

He quirked an eyebrow, then thrust the suit above his head as though it were the head gleaned from a hunt. “Behold, the mark of a beast I have tamed. I shall take the prince to my bed this evening as my prize.”

“Make me wait that long?” I swam up to kiss his ankle, dripping water making branches of the hair on his legs. He shifted slightly, leaned down to take my hand. “I’m good down here,” I said, as he made to pull me up. He shrugged, knelt, licked the water off my knuckles. I ran my fingertips over the line of his chin.

“I can’t remember exactly when you can see Mercury. Or if you can.” I said. “I wish you could see Venus.”

“She comes out at night. As lovers do.” Oliver scanned the sky as he stood, watching the stars melt in the eye of the oncoming sun. He looked down at me again, then bent a knee and thrust his hip to the side, one hand draped over his chest, the other holding my suit over his groin - an uncanny and delightfully droll Aphrodite. 

“Ahh, yes!” I cried, “For ’twas from the sea, in Cytherean waters, so runs the tale, that the mother of the Amores, undraped, arose.” He closed his eyes, bit his lip - tempting, dreamy, _ridiculous_. I snorted, whipped a hand through the water to splash him. “I always pegged you as Adonis.”

“Well, in that case.” He drew one hand through his hair, then rolled into an exaggerated flex. The roiling sea in me burned, licked at my heart, and I lunged, stroked a line up the back of his calf to tickle the soft spot behind his knee.

“Oy!” He dropped his hand and tried to slap mine away - I scrambled to grab him and tug his long limbs into the water. He wasn’t up for the struggle, tumbled gracelessly in and half onto me; we slid chest deep, the force pushing us apart. Bodies, satellites, lost in space.

I seized the forefinger of his left hand and pulled us together, colliding in a mess of knees. He tossed his wet hair out of his face and had the nerve to try and dunk me, grinning like a loon. 

I looped my arms round his waist instead, and nosed under his chin. I slid my hands across the small of his back, felt the ridge of each hip, reached lower for the thickness of his thighs. “Up.” He blinked to clear his gaze. Fixed it on me like he had when he’d ran a single, tentative finger across my lips in the grass. I squeezed.

The water buoyed him as he lifted his legs to wrap around my waist, his arms round my shoulders. Above and below me. I licked over the bulge of his Adam’s apple, and he dipped his head, slid his hand into my hair, and kissed me. A good-morning kiss. A lazy, at-your-ease, kiss. An invitation. I didn’t care that his mouth still tasted of river-water and the semi-sour tinge of morning. It was him, and I craved it.

I noticed just how blond his hair was in the growing light as I pressed him back, back against the slope of rock he’d climbed minutes ago. Still waist-deep in the water, it gave us both a little support. He reclined back against it as I kissed over the upside-down v of his ribs, watched the flush tint his face as he hitched his legs up and over my hips more, so he could hang on. He bent an elbow and reached back to rest his head on his arm so he could watch me. I leaned in, stood on my toes on the slick lake-floor, and buried my face in the lush nest of hair beneath his arm. 

_Shame comes with age_ , I thought, remembering Mafalda’s words as he squirmed beneath me, and I ran my fingers along the apricot’s curve, along the cleft. 

“Not hurting you, am I?”

“No, no,” he said, squeezed my shoulder. “Not at all. Keep going.”

This was easy. This was wonderful. He was too far away to kiss, so instead, I lifted my free hand and brushed my knuckles over the line of his jaw - he caught it, pressed it to his lips. The skin of his forearms stood out in the dark drop of stone behind him. Private, and pale. It mirrored the color of his inner thighs. Lower, deeper, where my fingertips longed to explore, blushed the color of his cheeks. My golden boy, bedecked in blue - I longed to find the places where he was soft, and open, and pink.

“Elio,” he whispered, and rocked ever so slightly. More than a hint. A passing of the reins.

I wanted things I dared not name. I could so easily mess this up. I wanted to keep going in this easy, lazy rhythm, no mistakes, no questions, nothing. His erection pressed softly against my belly, almost polite. _Hello. I’m here. Pay attention to me._

I drew back, and took him in one hand, parted my lips and let a long, slick line of saliva drip down onto the head of his cock. He sighed, then, as I squeezed him from root to tip, thumbing over the slit. He was so hard, so hot in my hand. I wished it were my head between his legs rather than my spindly hips, but this would do for now. I love the restriction.

Oliver caught my chin between finger and thumb. I met his gaze, found the doors behind his eyes wide open. Wanting. He’d let me do anything.

His fingers traveled from my chin, down my throat to my chest, thumb caressing and drawing a slow circle round my right nipple. I wasn’t quite as sensitive as he was there, but it didn’t matter - it made me bite my lip and moan all the same. 

Oliver dropped his hand down and took over, stroking himself luxuriously. I loved watching him, loved how he handled his own body, how he was rougher with himself than I was brave enough to be. He rubbed the dew of my spit along the head as I thumbed at the love bite on his thigh I’d left the day before. I pressed into the darkened mark, and he arched, tried to spread his legs while still hooked round me. My cock slid to nestle in the cleft of his ass, and his eyes dropped shut. Oh. 

“Good?”

“Yes, very. Mmm.” He arced down towards my hand - my fingers dared even lower, even deeper. He couldn’t have meant here, now, unprepared as we were. Even if he did, I couldn’t. Even I knew that was impractical. All the same, I held my breath, leaned down and pressed a kiss to his sternum as I traced that tight entrance to his body beneath the water. All it would take would be a hint of pressure. Just a bit, and I'd be inside him. His heart beat wildly beneath my lips. He wasn’t lying. He liked this. Liked it quite a bit.

“You want this?” I whispered, daring to look up at him. His cheeks were dusky as the flesh I was touching now. 

“Yes.” 

The water around us felt so still, even as I pressed my finger inside him, as slow as I could **.** I could hear his hitch of breath, and I stopped, as startled as I was eager - he shook his head. 

“S’fine. More than fine.” 

I had done this with Marzia, I knew the general mechanics. He’d done this to me, just last night. It had driven me wild. I felt my voice trapped in my throat. _Don’t be afraid_. I tried to let my thoughts fall away, like dried petals dropping silent behind me, just his breath and his heaving chest and his hot, hot flesh all but pulling me in.

“Give me two,” he whispered.

“Two, yeah?”

“Please,” he breathed, barely audible. My ears rang. He covered his face, reddening down to his breastbone. My shy boy. 

“Ohhh, come on, now. I’ll give you two.” I did, carefully, so carefully. Careful words, careful hands. Careful risk. “Didn’t know you liked this so much.”

“Ahhh,” he whispered, his hand leaving his face and back down to his prick, and his eyes were closed. I’d grant him that. Give him the refuge. Even if only for a minute. 

“You’re so hard. I wish I could give you more.” The words were falling from my mouth like someone else was speaking. Him, myself, some unknown spirit of desire, debauchery. Anchoring me, possessing me. “I could, if you wanted.”

“Yes,” he said, and there was voice behind it. My turn to gasp. 

“You’d like that?” I said, and bent my fingers in an attempt to do what he had last night. Even though I couldn’t slide in and out how I might want to, it mattered little. He was helping me. Moving against me, pressing his hips down, jerking himself off hard and quick, and, fuck, I’d only seen it a handful of times, but I could feel he was close. 

“ _Yes_ , yes, I would.”

“You want me to top you, Elio?” My brain full of fire. My mouth untamed. My words unguarded. _Do I know you?_ “You want me inside you?”

He clenched so hard around me that my fingers slid out of him, and I watched the shot of white coat his fingers and further up on his stomach, felt the “yes” on his lips like it had come from my own. 

He sat up, gripped the back of my neck, and kissed me so hard that I thought I might faint. In what felt like seconds, he’d pushed me to shore, lay me on the grass and put his mouth on me, and when I came down his throat, the sun broke through the trees, cast a glow over the water, and dawn rolled over both of us.

***

Oliver nudged me toward my room as we reached the landing. He said nothing. My bed was smaller, more cramped. Ripe with me. 

We slid naked beneath the single sheet. Oliver knit his arms round me, his chin nestling against my collarbone, eyelashes tickling my skin. He barely spoke over a whisper, only to ask once if I was comfortable. I felt too full to speak with the nearness, the dearness of him; he shared my pillow, the little tap-tap in his temple filled my head with a calm, melting clarity that lingered as our hands warmed our lake-chilled skin in waves of goosebumps.

We dozed until breakfast. When he moved to sit up, I tugged him back down to spoon up against his back.

“Mmm,” he rumbled, and wove his fingers between mine, the fluid roll of his hips all I needed to go from half-awake to full mast again. “Later.”

“Later?” 

“Later,” he murmured. I moved to lay my head atop his, my left cheek to his right. It grew hot as I rubbed against him. He was due for a shave. I could have stopped time, wished it so. Leave me there, with Oliver locked in my arms, half-asleep, hair damp, his face beneath mine. Perfect. Promising. And _pink_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elio's Venus quote is from Ovid: Heroides and Amores.
> 
> If you're here, I have to credit your amazing patience. I know this is a bit short, but it was originally all on the cutting room floor. I couldn't bear to keep it there. 
> 
> Next chapter will be much sooner (promise), as most of it is written. Plus, I have a few other stories in the works (if I ever get them out on paper).
> 
> As always, thank you so much for your kudos and comments on this little piece - I read and adore every single one of them, and it means the world that you're enjoying reading this as much as I enjoy writing it. Cheers! 
> 
> XOXO, L


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a break from my giant AU, sat down and this finally came to be. Here's an eight-month due apology in the form of 11,000 words of sex.

 

Even with so many fruit trees on the grounds, there were only a few worthy of climbing. Afternoon had rolled round and there I was, perched ever-so-precariously in the branches of one such gnarled oak, my mood blue as the midday sky.

I had slept in that morning after Oliver had finally left, not before kissing my hip as I cuddled his pillow. I’d been tempted to dress it in his shirt he’d left me, on the off chance the hint of him would rub off, cursing Mafalda’s need to wash and dry and iron and press the evidence of him out by sheer habit.

Marzia had caught me dashing across the grounds wearing it, the sleeves rolled up above my elbows. The hurt in her eyes was palpable, and I nursed it like a bruise, turning over the way her mouth had moved over the words, “Am I your girl?” I had been frozen to the spot, wondering, fearing she could see him, the invisible mark of him on me.

Part of me wanted to tell her. I wondered if she’d mind. If she’d understand. Maybe. But I was in the depths, and the shore where she stood now merely a forgotten dream. 

So there I was, half-draped and half-braced in the oak tree down further on the grounds where I’d once watched Oliver gallivanting like a terribly overgrown schoolboy, a flouncing spring in his step as carefree and billowy as the flapping tails of his undone blue shirt that now hung round my shoulders like a mantle. My head swam, with the heat, with the memory. It was early afternoon by now, and I had harbored hopes that the translator’s printer had somehow malfunctioned and been rendered useless for the rest of the summer, and cut the ties that kept him from me. I wanted to hate her, or at least sustain the annoyance I harbored for her hogging him day after day. I saved an extra thought, though, for without her mixup, he may never have followed me to the berm. Never kissed me. Never deigned to let me "offend" him.

The knot against my back was quickly becoming a knot _in_ my back. I shifted, groaned, uncomfortable, but I stayed. I wanted to catch first sight of him before anyone else, to incept him before any oncoming afternoon guests got the chance to paw and preen and persuade him to recite some surprisingly mastered Italian they’d presumed to be butchered by that _cauboi_ baritone. I was determined to catch him, to have him only for myself, first, and fresh from the road, freshly alone. The most himself he could be, save with me. When he was closest to _being_ me.

I arched my back, reached around and rubbed the mark along my spine. I was no Ovid creature, though the sun was doing a fair job of teasing me to near melting point. Willed or not, an image floated to my mind’s surface, my waiting limbs melded and twisted betwixt the branches, stiff and cold with too many years of longing, pale and dead and steadfast in unfleeting, delightfully tragic loyalty. Oliver, ecstatic in his despondence, falling ( _half-clothed_? _Naked_?) atop my vine-locked, petrified limbs. Perhaps weeping. Perhaps on the edge of grief-induced death himself, only for me to spring to life again under his touch, his tears, his warm skin. 

_Don’t be silly._ I wrinkled my nose. I was bored, and elated, and anxious. I knew he would be back. My fears were merely stoked by mingled discomfort and readiness with which I’d dismissed Marzia, worried that the same instinct might be present in him. The feeling was not dissimilar to a hangover, but it was my heart that ached more than my head. Like a wound made raw, itching at the place where the skin struggled to mend. I considered hopping down from my perch and perhaps going to grab my book. I might have time, I might not. Time had ceased to matter. There were only two states — with Oliver, and without Oliver. One blazing by, the other glacial. Of course, if I made the effort to get down and temper my boredom, he’d appear, no doubt. Everything was a test, now. Of my patience, of my will. My kindness. 

I yawned, stretched again. The shift in my weight on the branch made an ominous cracking sound. My hand flew up to the limbs above my head as I gave a lurch and nearly toppled with a yelp, my legs swinging .

I kicked out to try and regain some momentum, scraping my ankle in the process. I swore and managed to clamber into a position where I could grip the branch above and sit, my feet dangling down. I glanced down at my ankle, relieved it wasn’t bleeding.

“Is this your best impression of a low-hanging fruit?” 

_If I let go now_ , I wondered, _would he catch me?_ The swoon was enough to make my grip slacken slightly and I dropped my gaze. There he was, striding towards me, all blue eyes and blazing smile. He was wearing the cream-colored suit with the red stripe, and the blue and white shirt we had worn down that day we’d been down to the sea with my father. All that chest on display, all that soft hair, all that skin, exposed and waiting like a target for someone to shoot some rogue arrow through. I pointed my toes and tried to reach for him with both feet. He came right underneath me, took them in his hands, ran his thumb over both my insteps, kissed them. 

“Couple o’mangoes right here.” He tipped his chin up and smiled at me, his fingers clasped gently round my ankles. I wondered how different it would feel to be below him with my feet on his shoulders, as they were. How different it would feel with his on mine. 

_Come up, Oliver,_ I wanted to say _. Come up here and spend the day with me in the trees, like a pair of pastel colored, man-shaped tropical birds. We can live in the trees and look down on everyone. We can be animals, live without egos, without obligations, with nothing but the instinct to fawn and fight and feast and fuck. That’s all I want. Is it so much? Is it so much to ask?_

“I didn’t want to be all cooped up,” I said, ran the curve of my instep over the side of his neck, and was pleasantly reminded of his probable talent to grow a beard. Did he ever do so? Or was he clean cut and always bare, like now? The side of his throat was just a tad raspier than I had remembered. He must have known, or sensed the slowness with which I caressed him, and ran a hand over his jaw. “Did you get your pages?”

He shrugged, as though to say, “ _What does it matter_?” This was where he wanted to be, now. He gave my ankle a squeeze and let go, and reached up with the practiced grace that came so naturally to him, gripped a branch and heaved himself up into the tree with me. I would have made room, normally, but he didn’t need my help, navigated his way until he was perched, almost wound, in the tree limbs. He looked entirely too at ease. Entirely too comfortable. Entirely too gorgeous. The nerve. I laid my hand on his knee, and his eyebrows shot up, bemused and fond. A tame gesture for me, of course, but I wanted to make sure he was real. Solid. Not a dream or want to inch away from me. He brushed the tails of his shirt away and I slid my hand up further so the tips of my fingers dipped under the hem of his suit, feeling the soft meat of his thigh. He smiled, winked, and his eyes hooded as I skimmed my hand over the bruise on his hip. 

“Still hurt?”

“A little. I’ll survive.” He smoothed his hand over my arm, warm and affectionate. His fingers wrapped round my wrist, his fingers overlapping. He did not squeeze. 

“I finished the Hayden,” I said.

“Did you?” It was like he had been aching to listen to me all day. I felt cherished, seen. 

“Not on paper, but in my head. Six times over.” 

“Thinking about it is still working on it, I’d say. Your hands don’t think, even if you believe they have a mind of their own.”

I leered. “Well, you know mine do.” My fingers hooked over the waistband of his shorts, my thumb under the hem of the leg, tightened into a fist so all that gorgeous thigh was exposed, and I could clearly see the outline of his cock. He was so big, and yet did not move, did not resist. Basked in my touch. I think I saw him ease back into hammock of boughs, content to let me do as I pleased. I thought of this morning, how he had arched across the rock, let me move my fingers inside him. I thought of how he’d surrendered, how he’d touched himself, his face lit by the sun when he came. How he did not hide **.** I let go of his suit, took his hand. 

He tilted his head, his eyes twinkling. I wanted his arms around me. Or mine around him. Maybe he wanted to be held now and then.

“Something on your mind?” I asked, knowing there was. Something had changed in the air when his eyes had found mine. I could see it. He licked his lips, shrugged. It didn’t make me nervous, but I knew he was turning something over in his mind, and he wasn’t quite sure what to say. It was odd, endearing to see him unsure. To see him like me. To feel the urge and the ability inside me to coax things out of him. The only one he let see this different Oliver. 

“Just,” he began, “wondering who your parents are having over tonight.” There was an air of casualty that I would always aim for and never score. “How long they’ll need us.” _When can we sneak away_ , I thought, and wanted more than ever to freeze time. We could live here, in this tree, with him telling me in this moment that he just wanted to spend the evening together. That his hands and his heart were of one mind, and it was entirely focused on me.

“We can skip, I’m sure,” I said. “Could even go out into town. Get ice cream if you really want.”

He shrugged again, but the corner of his lip was curling in the shy, boyish manner. He didn’t really want that. “Perhaps.” I let go of his hand and reached up to hold onto the branch while I arched my back. My spine cracked three times. “Sounds like popcorn,” he commented.

“Not in the mood for a movie,” I yawned. He chuckled, and in an instant, hopped down easily into the grass without so much as a misstep, brushing bark off his shorts. I swung my legs back and forth, tried to hook the collar of his shirt with a toe, to bring him back toward me, but he dodged with a cheeky smile and tickled me behind one knee. I drew my leg in, then relaxed, let him touch me. 

“Come on down,” he said, and it was not a demand, merely a coaxing of his own. I couldn’t say no, and slid down, hissing as I scratched up the back of my thighs in the process. He had to laugh. I was nowhere near as graceful as he. He turned around, stooped a little. I took the cue and leapt onto his back, gripped his hips with my legs, arms draped over his broad shoulders. “I forget how tall you really are,” he said, hoisting me a bit further so I was secure. I pressed my cheek to his temple. “What’s daddy-long-legs in Italian?”

“ _Papà gambelunghe_.”

He snorted. “Good to know it sounds just as ridiculous.”

“Where’re we going?” I mumbled against his ear as he strolled across the grounds, away from the house.  

He nuzzled me, squeezed my thigh. “Maybe some tennis?” 

 

***

 

Tennis was not a euphemism, and we played until the day’s heat began to temper and we were both sweaty and winded. I did not make him carry me back, even if he could. I didn’t want to tire him out too badly. 

He stopped in the foyer to speak with my parents, and of course, make pleasantries with the dinner guests. I told Mafalda I wasn’t feeling well, wouldn’t be at dinner, but that all I needed was a lie down. I didn’t want her to fuss, or tell my parents. Mercifully, she let me off easily, touched my cheek and told me there was more fruit for a smoothie should I want one later.

Oliver caught my eye and nodded once, towering over the heads of our guests, a silent signal - _I’ll be right up._ Caught. I almost felt bad for leaving him there, but there was nothing to be done. I rinsed myself off in the shower, contemplated laying naked in our bed, but I remembered him last night, dressing even after our foray up in the attic. I peeked into the next room, technically my room, to see Mafalda had set out another small pile of clean clothes for me; underwear, my tan swimsuit, the band tshirts on constant rotation. I plucked one from the pile, pulled it over my head, tugged on some underwear, left everything else.

I promised myself that I would only close my eyes for as long as it took for him to come upstairs. I heard the boom of his laughter, allowed the smile to come to my lips, even alone up here. I felt the pull, and bade myself to let it be, to let him feel it. To let the longing between us deepen, intensify. Sweeten the reward. I rolled onto my stomach. I was sleepy, lovesick, longing for him. _Like longing made life_. Where had I heard that before? A pleasant breeze rolled through the window, rustling leaves outside like the swishing sound of a woman’s skirt. Like waves. _Waves. The sea._

I had been dreaming so much of the sea lately. Not the warm salt of the Mediterranean, but great, deep, blue, northern depths. Familiar as my mother’s face, and yet foreign and strange to my waking life. Like coming home to an empty house and finding everything there has been replaced with an exact copy.

I focused on that familiar, uncanny tingling feeling, warm, and blue, and blossoming. Like trying to taste a memory by a familiar smell in the air, a single phrase of a half-remembered tune. In it, my unintentional meditation, I drifted off. I didn’t hear him come in, but I did jerk awake for half a second, shocked into sudden realization that I had been asleep, and heard the shower running. Smelled his shampoo. 

I ran my hand over the covers, tried to stay awake. I shifted to lay diagonally on the bed, stretched across the twin mattresses that somehow fit us both. Incredible how he made room for me when there was barely enough for him in the first place.

He was taking longer than usual. 

I closed my eyes again, listened to the muted rumble of water in the porcelain tub. I must have drifted off again because next I knew, the afternoon sun had melted into blue-grey twilight. The air was balmy and warm. The window open. I don’t know how I noticed any of that first, before noticing that Oliver was laying with me, holding me, my head pillowed on his arm, my nose brushing his chest. One of his hands skimmed fingertips over my shoulder, soft enough to give me goosebumps. His other hand held his translator’s pages above him, going over her notes.

He was wearing a pair of light blue boxers. Mine, probably, seeing how short they were on him. He was slim, but still round and soft in places where you could feel my bones. I loved it, envied it, wished I had some of the extra meat on me as well, that way I didn’t feel like cuddling a bag of sticks. One of his calves was tucked between mine, a loose lock that radiated affection. It sent a relief I had not thought to seek flooding through me, like a confirmation that he liked me even when I wasn't paying attention, that he wanted me near, wanted me close. Wanted _me_ , period.

I didn’t move. I didn’t want him to know I was awake just yet. I liked taking him in like this, lost in his mind, wrapped around me, waiting on me, it seemed, and yet entirely unaware of my gaze on him. Oblivious and unguarded; it felt more intimate than seeing him naked. 

I wondered what it was to see your words in another tongue. To read them almost the same, and completely alien. Like looking in a mirror and seeing a stranger. Becoming used to his face until eventually you started calling it your own. And then to find someone who wore your face almost better than you did, and find he answered to your own name…

I let my eyes close again, sighed in faux sleep. Oliver made a sound in his throat, rubbed his cheek over the crown of my head. His fingertips drew circles on my skin. I heard him whisper a word, lips wrapping around the Italian, slowly, one letter at a time. Learning it, feeling it in his mouth. 

He ran a hand idly, tenderly, across my back, into my hair. Curled a bit round his finger, grazing my ear. I could fall asleep again listening to him. I would have given a year of my life to wake up like this again, over and over, on a loop, until the tape of my life greyed before my eyes and all that was left was this moment, beginning and beginning again.

I rolled my ankle, slid my palm under his shirt to feel his skin. He nosed my temple. A day before, he’d kissed me awake, put his mouth on my cock. Touched me like it was the last time he ever would. Now, he held me with a casual, uncynical affection that made me feel less like a singular fire blazing across his sky, and more like a comfort. Like I was his home. A constant, like Polaris. Like he might call me his…

I looked up, sighed as though I were just coming to. I slid my hand further up his shirt, and I watched the years between us melt away again as he saw I was awake, putting aside his pages. I felt his smile against my mouth as he kissed me. He’d just shaved. I licked a line over the roundness of his chin, and he laughed.

“You having some good dreams?” he asked as I slid my thigh up to drape over his, arched my back and stretched, all of me against all of him. 

I huffed, running my hands through his hair, soft and still damp. He’d washed it, and I remembered back when hearing the sound of the shower made the jealousy rise like sickness in my throat, imagining who he might have been with. What he liked. If there was a reason he came home every night. Dreaming, hoping maybe, that it was me, and stopping before I could let myself imagine being right.

“Some dreams,” I yawned, and rolled onto my back. He propped himself on an elbow to look at me, but I reached up, brought him to me, laid his head on my chest. He didn’t even hesitate, gave me his weight. “You on the beach. In a sweater.”

“Mmm. Odd choice.” He closed his eyes. I ran my fingertips over his cheekbones. He’d gotten some sun. 

“Good choice.”. He had a tender spot on his lip where I must have bitten it. Or had he? I ran my thumb over the reddened mark, and the little shadows of eyelashes on his cheekbones blinked. “Do you grow your beard when it gets cold?”

“Sometimes.”

“Hard to picture.”

“Really? Can’t see me as a mountain man?”

I giggled, picturing him in a plaid shirt and jeans with an axe over his shoulder. A ridiculous image - I could see it clearly, and couldn’t see it at all.

“Do you _want_ to see me with one?” he asked, eyebrows raised. I considered, knowing he would if I asked him to - or at least in my head, he would. I didn’t know what sorts of things he would say yes to, what he thought of what I wanted. What he thought of his own wants. 

“Too hot for the summer. Besides, I feel like I’d have to do something in return, and I can’t grow a mustache. It just looks like an eyebrow on my lip.”

He sputtered. “What an image. Your mouth an eyeball, constantly staring at me.”

“I like you barefaced,” I said. “It lets me see all of you.” I could tell I’d prodded that shy spot again, because his humor sprang to the defense at once; he curled a fist under his chin with a twee smile, looking off into space posing for an invisible camera. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to kiss him or keep him there, heavy and leaning on me. He chose for us, heaving himself up on his forearms to give me what I wanted. I went a step further, pressed my foot into the joined beds and rolled us over so I was on top. “Someday I want to see all your schoolboy photos.” 

He pulled a face that said _yikes._ “I was a chubby little thing, that’s for sure.”

“Were you?”

“Oh yes. Years before I lost all that puppy fat and looked like I’d been put through the taffy-puller.”

“Aww. You were a cherub, I’m sure.”

“That’s one word for it,” he sighed. His sunburn seemed darker than before. Picturing him with a beard was strange. Picturing him as a small, round-faced child was strange. Strangest of all was the thought that he had ever been anything other than what he was right now. With his surety, his bravado, his swaggering, effortless grace, he seemed to have just burst into existence fully formed, like some forgotten Greek god. I had built a mythos around him, and not without his help, but I went very suddenly from wanting to tease him, to wanting to hold him, _all_ of him — the young boy he was, the old man I hoped he’d become, the scholar, the student, the professor, the lover. The him from now, from this morning, from midnight, and all the midnights and mornings before, alone and alike, melding into one.

He regarded me with some amusement. There were reasons I didn’t play poker then, or ever after. “Don’t think too hard.” 

“Tall order.” Mafalda’s dinner bell came, ringing through the house. Everyone would be petering out to the other side of the villa, toward the kitchen, the dinner table under the trees. As far as one could get from the front door, from the French windows, from him, and from me. 

“You hungry?” he murmured. Asking without asking. _You want to leave?_

“No. You?” He wasn’t. _Good_.

I kissed him again. He ran his hands up the backs of my arms, under the sleeves of my tshirt. I opened my mouth, and he mirrored me. I waited for hands on my throat, on my face, on my shoulders. They didn’t come. Instead, his fingers skimmed my sides, spread over my hips, the backs of my thighs. He was letting me steer, find the rhythm, take control. Trusting me. He was so big, so masculine, all the parts I’d found so intimidating really just things he couldn’t help, and the idea that he felt he had to _make do_ with himself made me crazy. I slid my tongue into his mouth, greedy in the thrill of having him so willingly underneath me. I licked over his lower lip, where the small, reddened mark was, kissed it, soothed, tasted. 

“Hurt?” He shrugged. “Hip, lip, you’re falling apart,” I said, and he rolled his eyes, let his hands settle on my ass and give it a squeeze. I was hard at once, or had I been already? The question, and its answer, if I ever really considered it, dissolved sooner than it had formed. He winked, parted his knees to give me more room. I moved, remembered this morning, and dropped my hands down to cradle his thighs, bring each one over my hips. 

It was like nicking a tripwire - his breath caught and the line of his body rolled upward slightly, trying to meet me. His legs went round my waist without a hitch, his hands floating to my shoulders, and then I caught it, the flicker in his eyes that no one, _no one_ had ever seen but me. Not now, not ever. 

I saw him, then. Really and truly. If there were no other truths in my life, I would stand by that one, that single moment, and bid the rest of me content to be a fool, apt to believe anything or nothing. 

I lifted up a bit, from forearms to fists, looked at him full in the face. “It’s just me,” I said, trying for comfort. Instead it sounded dull and thick-witted. He laughed, barked, almost, and I could feel myself turning red. _Maybe I’m wrong_ , I thought, but I knew him well enough to know he got chummy when he was nervous. 

“No such thing,” he said, and the confirmation of my original instinct made my heart twist more than the few seconds of preemptive embarrassment. “ _Just_ you,” he said, low, as though to him it was ludicrous thought. I thought of him, standing golden and suave in the spring, staring at me through that still icy blue veneer. “You really that afraid of what I think?” Code for, _I’m afraid of what you think of me, too._

I sat back on my heels, rubbing his thighs, watching his face. I didn’t speak. I didn’t want to give him a way out, not of letting me see him. He couldn’t hide. Oliver looked up at me, and I knew he was building up courage, courage I wanted to tell him he didn’t need. But he did. He did because I did. We lived in that space together.

He ghosted fingertips up the insides of my arms, letting his gaze drop to the design on my shirt, toying with the hem. I reached back, tugged my shirt off over my head. That must have pleased him; he let me help him with his. I dropped down again, let the tip of my nose touch his, the tiniest of rubs. Playing coy. He licked his lips. 

“Kiss my neck?” he whispered. He was definitely blushing, now. I didn’t grace him with a response, I was too happy that he had asked at all. I pushed him back and slid a hand into his hair, tipping his head so I could do as he wished. I wondered if he was ticklish, because I could feel the resistance, the sudden hardening of his limbs, the automatic response to not just shy away, but recoil - and then he softened, dropped his head back, let me move him, because it was me, and because he wanted it. _Yes, Oliver. You can let go with me._

He had seen my rawest self. I wanted to see inside him. I could feel his pulse beneath my lips as I kissed over the line of his neck, down to the valley of his collarbones. His shoulders were still warm from the sun, from the shower. He moaned, softly, right in my ear. His breath rustled my hair. Shallow, quick. Hot. 

I wondered if we were both imagining this morning. Him, beneath and around and below me, buoyed by the water, light and alive and malleable in desire. We were heavy, now, like every second between sunrise and now had soaked into us and we were laden, drunk with the weight of unspoken wants. I was hard, as was he. I could feel his cock pressing against my stomach through his shorts, and yet he held me tighter, hugged my flanks with his knees. At once keeping me there, keeping me close, and keeping me from seeing, from touching all of him.

I had other plans. 

When his hands coming to caress the back of my neck, I took the opportunity to tug at the hem of his shorts until the waistband slid a bit down over his hips. My teeth grazed over his skin, not hard enough to leave a mark, though I knew he’d let me. 

_Would he, though?_

I paused, and he turned his head, catching me off guard. His mouth found mine again, and his fingers tightened at the back of my neck. “Fuck,” I gasped, rocked forward. 

“You’re telling me,” he purred. So smug. I had a hard time looking exasperated, mostly because he was helping me push his shorts off so he was finally naked. He wanted me to follow suit, no doubt, but I was happy to make him wait. He was hard, _so_ hard, a vision with his knees falling apart as I slid down, his hands in my hair. He didn’t look away as I took his cock into my mouth, his own falling open as he watched me lick and suck and stroke him until my chin was wet and he had to fight to keep from squirming. 

I pressed my tongue to the soft vee beneath the head, and the next thing I knew, he had gripped my wrist painfully hard with a gasp of, “Come here, come here.” I didn’t dare disobey him, only for fear of it all being over too soon. 

His hands were so big on me, groping through my shorts. I had so loved being the one naked that night of our first fumbling, but now I loved him bare beneath me. It wasn’t for long. Within seconds he had my underwear around my thighs, and I toppled to the side trying to get it off. He laughed, so happy, following me, and whisked the last of the fabric off over my ankles so we were skin to skin. I wrapped my arms around his neck as he brought me on top again, and then he was moving me, pushing at my limbs and encouraging me to straddle his face. 

I had never done this, holding the headboard and watching dumbstruck as he put my dick in his mouth, reached for my hands and put them both on his head. I had to close my eyes. I couldn’t watch. He cupped my ass in his hands, willing me, bidding me to fuck his face. I did. Slow as I could, for both our sakes. I could live on this loop, listening to his halting breath, the wetness of sliding in and out of his mouth, our mingled sounds that peppered the air between us, free on this side of the house to be a little louder than usual.

His fingers were exploring. Teasing my balls, caressing my hips, two dipping between my cheeks to stroke gently over my hole. I gripped the headboard with one hand, my control faltering. “Oliver, Oliver,” I panted. He groaned beneath me, and one of his hands darted down to where I couldn’t see, but could guess. With the last amount of conscious will I could muster, I pulled out of his mouth, winded and foggy-eyed. “Oh fuck,” I gasped. “ _Elio_.” His blue eyes were dark, and there was that smirk again.

“So eloquent,” he murmured, tickling the back of my thigh. I stuck out my tongue and clumsily made my way down to his level, trading the taste of one for the other over tongues and lips, like words, like names. “Fuck,” he gasped, his teasing forgotten as I pinched his nipples and sank my teeth into his shoulder. “Oh god, _fuck_ me. Fuck me, _please_.”

It didn’t sound like a slip. Thinly veiled, like asking me to kiss his neck. Like tripping on a tree’s roots when you’re busy looking up at the leaves. I pulled back to look into his eyes, making sure I’d heard clearly. “You…want me to?”

“You don’t have to.” He was backtracking, now.

“No, no. I want to.” I felt the heat in my face as I said so. “God, you’ve no idea how bad I want to.” I didn’t know if I could, though. I’d toyed with the idea, pressed a few fingers into him this morning, felt the world cave in around my ears.

“But?” he prodded gently, lacing our fingers together.

“Nothing. I just…didn’t think that was something you wanted.”

He let go of my hands, reached up to cup my face, tracing the shape of my eyebrows with his thumbs before pressing a kiss right between them. So soothing, it might have put me to sleep any other time. 

“I want it very much,” he whispered, and the words rolled around in my head like a marble on the floor. _I want it very much._

“I do too,” I whispered, and felt such a powerful surge of emotion that all I could think to do was lean in and hug him. He wrapped his legs around my hips, like a woman, held me. I think I loved him then.

“You alright?” he asked, his voice quiet and kind. I nodded. “Promise?”

“Promise.” I sat up, blinked hard. “Um…I don’t know if I have any lotion.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry.” He sat up, swung his legs out of bed, and crossed the room to the open bathroom door, leaned round the frame and grabbed something, back at my side in an instant. “I stopped at the pharmacist earlier today.”

I was surprised he’d been home and back before I’d seen him that afternoon. Inside the bag he handed me was a small bottle of lube, which it looked like he’d opened already. “Did you try it out?” 

He feigned innocence, giving a shrug. “Quality control.” His smile faltered, and he touched my arm. “I felt bad. I wanted to make sure it’s better for you next time. If there is a next time.”

I took his face in both my hands, just as he had, and in that frame he looked somehow years younger. He looked my age. “This _is_ next time,” I said. Oliver’s shoulders dropped, like I had cut another binding holding him back. He kissed me, brought me with him as he lay back again, open, tender, wanting. It _was_ better. Everything was. 

“I’ve never actually used this,” I said, shaking the bottle. His smile was promising.

“It’s nice. Trust me.”

I did trust him. I thought about him, here in this bed, alone. Thinking of me? Where had I been? In the tree outside? Had he heard my voice, speaking to my mother on the grounds? Maybe he had me at the piano in the parlor earlier that afternoon, where I had not been able to fight the urge jerk off with the memory of his tongue inside me. I thought of him listening to me play, opening the bottle with not so much as a moment of preamble, slipping out his shorts and sliding his fingers inside himself. Did he use them often? Maybe. Or maybe it was the first time in years. Even if he told me, I’d never know for sure. 

The delicious uncertainty made me hotter, harder. Had he made noise? Pushed his face into the pillow as he fucked himself, his arousal so potent and tangible and tangled in mine, he might have felt me in the room? Had he heard me play, and paused, and touched himself as I had touched myself, our bodies so locked in the gravity of desire, that we could feel the other’s hand, in and and around, as though it were his own?

“Does that get you going?” he asked. Deep. Dark. Blazing. I could feel it everywhere. In my bones, in my blood.

“ _You_ get me going,” I said, tracing the yellowing crescent on his hip. 

I was in his way, but he made space for me. “C’mere,” he murmured. “I don’t need a lot of prep.” Confirming my earlier suspicions. He was randy as I was. I slid into the warm spot he had left.

“Mmm,” I said, and dropped my face against his shoulder. “How are you so good at everything? You don’t even have to try.”

“I’m always trying,” he said. He flipped open the lid of the bottle.

“I don’t want you to,” I purred. “Try, I mean. Not with me.” My hand closed round his wrist. Oliver glanced at me, then handed me the bottle put his arm around me then, let me do what he would. His other hand went to his cock, stroking himself lazily to stay hard. I took the lube, poured some on my fingers, and slid two inside him like I had this morning. He was right. It made everything easier.

Oliver wasn’t very patient, and it was barely a few minutes before he had turned in my arms so he was on his side and flung a leg over my hip. I pressed in deeper, my fingers strong, and he groaned into my mouth. “Please,” he said, breathless, and his fingers closed round my cock. “Give it to me.” I had never heard him use that voice, had never heard that edge-like, aching tone, and it felt like dipping molten glass into water. Everything blinding steam, near and now, and for some reason I felt like there was a time limit, like I was in a race with myself - I wanted to do as he asked, wanted to take him over, wanted more than anything to pin him down and slide into him and give him what we both needed. I pushed him onto his back, sinfully smug to see his eyes so glazed, lust-dumb. He wanted it so bad. 

“Yes,” he whispered, as my clumsy fingers pressed the head of my cock against him. “Fuck me. Fuck me, Oliver.” My hands were shaking. I could feel him trying to relax, the skin around me taught, yet giving. 

“Like this?” I asked thickly, for I could not ask him if he was certain. “Right here? On your back?”

“Just like this.” He could tell I was stalling, pressed a thumb sweetly to the corner of my mouth. I could barely breathe. It would take barely a second, barely a few pounds of pressure, a shift of my balance and I’d be inside, closer to him than anyone. I just wanted it to be good. I wanted to be good for him. 

Oliver could feel my hesitation. “Hey,” he whispered, and I looked up. His gaze was soft, and he was so gorgeous laying there, his flushed, loving face against the yellow pillowcases, a sight to add onto the list of things I was stunned was still mine to see. I would have pried out my beating heart for him as my eyes fell on the soft rolls his stomach made, bent as he was with his knees in towards his chest as he gathered me close, kissing my ear. “It’s just me,” he rumbled, and I felt his voice as much as I heard it.

I gave a dry sob that might have passed for a laugh, having my words handed back to me. I knew what he meant. Just Oliver. Just Elio. I should have known, and it made me relax. He was safe, and beautiful, and opening himself to me, under me. I wanted him to be happy. I gave a roll of my hips, pushed inside, and his breath rushed out in a long, low draft, like I’d opened a window inside him. His nails bit my shoulders, and I scrambled for my bearings - it was almost more intense than having him inside me. Heat, the soft pull as though his whole body, his whole being was trying to draw me in. I could see him unravelling, the control and composure bleeding from his face. 

“ _God_ ,” he breathed. “Oh god.”

“Feel good?” I rasped. 

“So full. You’re filling me up.” 

I dove down. His lips were hot, hot like a mouthful of coffee, the biting burn of cognac. Every small movement seemed so magnified. We were treading over the deep together. 

I thrust, lightly, slowly, just a handful of times. Oliver’s eyes slid shut, his mouth open. “Oh fuck,” he croaked, like there wasn’t enough air to form the words. “Oh fuck,” he said, louder this time, and his fingers dug into my upper arms. The hair at his temples was dark with sweat. He was so tight, his muscles quivering around me, everything condensed into a single point, where I was buried inside him. He gripped the pillow beside his head, moaned my name, wrapped his legs around me again - and very suddenly, my breath was gone, and I shut my eyes, pulled out. 

“Oh no,” I panted.

“Wha—?” He touched my shoulders, my face. I reached down, _no no no_. “Elio, Elio, look at me.” But it was too late, I was coming, gasping against his skin and shooting across his thigh with a despondent groan, so mortified I wanted to turn inside out. 

“Oh!” He looked down, startled, then he laughed, threw his head back and laughed, one hand on his chest like he couldn’t take it.

“Nooooo,” I wailed, covering my face. 

“It’s okay,” he chuckled, reaching for me. “Come on. Really. It’s fine.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He tried to pry my hands away from my face. I wouldn’t let him. “God, you were just so — fuck, it just felt so good, and you looked so fucking beautiful—and then you started making _noise_ , and I just…” He gave up, finally tugging me into his arms to hold me. He was still shaking with stifled snickering as I buried my face in his shoulder. 

“I’m flattered,” he said, not a hint of disappointment in his voice. “My first time didn’t last even _that_ long.”

I immediately wanted to tell him that it wasn’t my first time, but the foot-stomp instinct died at once. I hadn’t lasted long with Marzia either. I started to wonder if I was as bad at this as I seemed. 

“I remember being your age,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing anymore. I felt bad, he needed to get off. Good on me for giving him a taste of something he might have been longing for, only to cut the wire and short circuit everything. I tried to move a hand between us, to find his cock and help him, but he stopped me. “Shh, it’s okay.”

“But I—“

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, gently but firmly. I swallowed. Oliver softened. “Just kiss me.” He pressed his cheek to mine. “I want that more than anything.”

He asked as though it were nothing. As though his skin wasn’t sticky with my come. As though he had no needs himself. I thought of the bliss that had come just from waking up in his arms, and the thought of leaving him barren and wanting broke my heart. I did as he asked, kissed him with my open mouth, wished I were bigger, wished I were taller and stronger and built like him, wished I could wrestle him around a bit and give it to him like he actually wanted. 

But then again, he might not want me that way. He wanted _me_. Here, and now, as I was. I wondered if I was also his first in this, as he was mine. Had anyone seen him like this? Had he had other men? Had he let them do as I was? Or was I the only one? 

Oliver sighed into my mouth, tipped his head, and his tongue touched mine. I put a hand on his throat, and he melted, not unlike me the first time he’d gripped my shoulder. It was like being dipped in gold, the taste of him exalted by the idea that yes, I was first, before, locked in his memory, perhaps the first temptation he had given into. An isolated kind of comfort that came with the word _only_. It curved in my mouth, like _one_ , like _uno_ , like _oh_ , like _Oliver._

He liked my hand on his neck. He liked my hands everywhere. I wondered later if he worried that I was touching him out of a sense of obligation, that it was all about making him come _right then_ , that maybe this was his way of trying to make it last. If it was less dissatisfaction, and more finding reason, finding time, finding excuses to draw it out. As though he were worried I wanted it to end. As though he were worried he’d never get this chance again.

I was spiraling. He knew I was thinking. When we parted momentarily, I could see him scan my face, and caught a glimpse of myself in his expression, like all my anxieties were rubbing off on him. 

“That all you want?” I said. He didn’t reply, but shifted a bit so we could lay facing each other again. He slid an arm round my shoulders, beneath my neck, and I pressed my leg between his thighs. He sighed as I traced the line of his shoulder, touching the triangle of freckles, licking over them, biting until my teeth left white marks that flushed red upon the air. I dragged my nails down his back, kissed his chest, up to his neck, which he bared without hesitation. It told me everything. He didn’t want to ask for it, and he didn’t want to stop. He was hard again, heavy against my thigh. When our mouths met after long minutes of mine learning the lines of his neck, his color was high again, and his kiss was wetter, messier. His hand moved between us, down over my chest, felt the line of my ribs. I mirrored him, felt the twitch of his prick against me as I drew a circle round his navel with my knuckle.

“Elio,” I hummed, trying it on for size. I felt the sound he made in return, where the back of my hand lay over his belly. 

“Oliver,” he drawled, slow and syrupy. It made me so happy. It made me so hot. My fingertips swept up his chest, and any words he’d had were cut off. I flicked his left nipple with my thumb, dragged my teeth over his lower lip as he moaned against me. I knew he loved it. I knew he’d never ask. I knew he wanted more. I pinched the soft bud, then licked the pad of my finger, returned and soothed, circled, stroked, and teased until Oliver’s breath quivered and he squeezed my leg between his with a whisper of his own name.

“Feel nice?” He nodded, spit in his palm and reached to jerk himself off, quick and hard. I didn’t shut my eyes as I kissed him, but he did. He either couldn’t help himself, or was shying away from my gaze, which I’m sure was burning into him like the sun I was named for. I had mercy, closed my eyes and slid my tongue between his lips, teasing his chest with both hands now. He made a sound I’d never heard, never expected. I was starting to learn him. I was starting to know him. 

Hearing him, seeing him, feeling him squirm in my arms - it was like hitting reset. I could sense in the stutter of breath that told me he was probably close, and I closed a hand round his wrist. Oliver gritted his teeth, thumped his forehead lightly to mine. “ _Please_ ,” he groaned. I wanted to hear him so loud all the time. He swallowed, ducked his head, nosed under my jaw, kissing my neck. Wheedling. Trying to appease. “Please, I—“

I pressed my thumb gently into the dip of his wrist, and his fingers curled around mine. I brought his hand to my groin, where I was hard again, and he let out a sigh against my neck that could have been wonder, or jealousy, or exasperation. Maybe all three. I rolled onto my back as he stroked me lightly, one leg still hooked over mine, head still on my shoulder. I draped an arm around him, and was struck at the picture of us, roles reversed, in the same position in which we’d woken up. Me holding him, now. I kissed his forehead, and he tipped his face up to look at me.

“You want to get on?” I asked. Oliver looked down, then back up at me. It was better than hearing the words allowed, just the private, unspoken _You want me to?_ I nodded, beamed at him. “Do it.”

He kicked a leg over my slim hips, mounting me, almost delicate, perched above my thighs. I groped blindly for the lube, but he didn’t bother, instead letting a long, glistening line of spit drip onto my cock, stroking me a few times before inching forward on his knees. I helped him, watched him, watched as he tipped his head to the side as though stretching a kink in his neck, grimacing.

“You good?” I asked.

“Yeah.” 

“We can stop if—“

“Don’t want to. Want you inside me.”

That shut me up. No hesitation in his voice at all. I felt the head of my cock nudge slick just behind his balls, felt his weight shift, and then I slipped inside him. I watched his face, rapturous, and lifted a hand to run my thumb over his lower lip. Oliver sucked it into his mouth, leaned into my hand, lowered both of his to the pillow on either side of my head. His eyes closed, and I wished he would open them. The twin visions of him above me, our first night, and now, flashed bold as two stained glass windows in my mind’s eye. He was so tight, so hot around me. I brushed my thumb tenderly over his cheekbone, then slid both my hands up into his hair, and ruffled it. He blinked down at me then, and laughed. 

“Does the mid-coital coif make me extra dashing?” I loved him soft. I loved him silly. _Mine,_ I thought, and it echoed in my ears like I’d said it aloud. _Mine, mine, mine._

“ _Bello_ ,” I said, because he was. _So_ beautiful. He winked at me, but there was less smugness in his face now; more, _I’m here with you._ I wanted to tuck him against my heart. I wanted to hold him in my lap, to crawl into his pocket. To live in the lines of his hands.

He rocked, lifted himself, lowered once. His legs were shaking. I could see the muscles in them tensing, working. His movements felt stilted. I tried to press up to meet him, but he shook his head. I stilled, grabbed his hips to slow him down.

“You sure it feels good?” 

He nodded. “It will.”

“You’re all tense,” I said. He stopped, blushed.

“No, I—mm,” he grunted, then cleared his throat. “Don’t want to break you in half, that’s all. I’m heavy.”

“No, you’re not.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not delicate,” I said, and tried not to sound peeved. It killed me that he was holding back. I was done with fear making his decisions. I wanted no barriers, no fears. No walls. “You don’t have to be gentle. I want you to take what you want,” I said, pushed my hand down between us, encouraged him to sit up. He did so, still bracing himself, but I put a hand on his lower belly, made him sink down, made him take it. I squeezed his thigh when his weight fully sank into my lap, when his breath rushed out all at once, when he grabbed my wrist and clapped his other hand over mine that was resting on his stomach. 

“Oh fuck,” he quavered. “That’s— _ohh_ fuck.”

“Too much?”

“ _No._ ” He rocked, letting his head fall back. “Feels good. Feels so fucking good.” 

It was so much, so hot to have him above me, gasping, fighting the urge to run his hands over himself. I made no such effort, greedily mapping my way up his torso, curling my fingers in his chest hair. “Yeah?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

I wrapped my other hand round his prick. He leaked so much, wet and glistening at the tip. I smeared his precum over the head with my thumb, stroked him luxuriously as he rode me, slowly at first, grinding his hips back and forth in a lazy wave, pausing before he arched, bounced lightly in my lap, the flush spreading from his cheeks down his neck. He had closed his eyes again, retreating into himself. I would not have it, I wanted to see what was happening inside him. I couldn’t believe he was letting me do this. I wondered if he could believe it either, if he ever thought, on the plane or the train or the car that brought him here, that in mere weeks, he would let the boy who’d taken his backpack up to his room, who had shied away from his touch, who had gifted him a book, like a token, like a rose left on the windowsill, open the door to his heart and peer inside.

I told him to look at me. He did, and I was glad I had come once already. It was like looking into the sun — his expression shocked me so, I almost wanted to look away. This departure, this secret Oliver, disheveled and raw and unmade, so there with me, with me _inside him._ I’d never felt so close to anyone in my life, and at the same time, felt something in my brain split. Like some forlorn phantom had whispered from the days to come, _You will never have this again. This is it. The world in your hands._

I sat up, threw my arms round his waist. Oliver in turn grabbed me round the shoulders, not with his hands, but his arms. Chest to chest, moving from his knees with a bit of difficulty until he was sitting right in my lap, his legs over my hips. He hadn’t been lying. He _was_ heavy. Almost too heavy. It pressed me deeper, almost too deep. Utterly divine. He could barely keep his eyes open, sighed as I licked over his lower lip, sucked the tip of his tongue, then bent his knees again and pressed his heels into the bed, fucking himself on my cock, on my lap. I loved it, loved to see his composure slipping, his poise dissolving under my touch like sugar in water. I locked one hand round my opposite wrist so his hips were tight to mine, and met him, thrusting up and in, until his forehead dropped down onto my shoulder and he told me, _begged_ me to keep going, to give it to him, there, right there, yes, _yes,_ right _fucking_ there.

We were kissing now, harder than before, sloppier, all tongues and open mouths. I massaged his hips, his legs, slid my fingers down and felt where we were connected. He pushed me onto the bed again, leaned back. I dug my fingers into his thighs as he fucked himself on me. His movements were more confident, or maybe he was just so deep in ecstasy that his thinking mind had finally left the equation and left just him, body and heart. He was looking right at me, letting me watch as my cock slid in and out, filling him, stretching him with every slap of his hips down against mine. 

I blush now to think of the words I used, the things I said to him, sweet, obscene. Oliver bit his lip. His thighs quaked. I knew he was close. “Yeah, that’s it,” I breathed, half-gone and close for the second time, “oh fuck, I can feel you, I can feel you, come—“

“Fuck, oh god, oh god,” he gasped, but he was slowing down, now. Anxiety spiked inside me like a road flare. “Oh god, stop, stop. I have to stop.”

“What’s wrong?” I tried to sit up again, but he put a hand on my chest to keep me there, moving onto his knees again, wincing as I slipped out him. “You hurt?” 

“No. Just…shit. I didn’t want to come like that.”

“Why?” My voice sounded slurred and stupid. I hoped it didn’t sound too heartbroken. He gave me a shaky half-smile, hissed as he leaned forward, massaged a cramp in his hip. I reached down to do so for him. He sighed and slid his arms under the pillow beneath my head.

“You would have heard me three rooms down,” he mumbled, and kissed the corner of my mouth. I wished we were outside, or far away, or the last two on earth, so I could hear him. What would it take? He must have read my mind, whispered right in my ear, “Maybe someday.”

I slid my fingers down his spine, over the flick of his tailbone, dipped between his cheeks to feel where I had been. He put his face against my neck, quiet. Submitting. Letting me do what I would. I pressed my fingers inside him. His mouth opened against my skin, and he sighed, caught between wanting to move back against them, and to keep rubbing, rutting slowly against me.

The sun had finally gone down. The wind from outside calm and fragrant, cloyed with the scent of fading blossoms, leaves. The water. Sex. Sweat, his and mine, drying on our skin. Oliver nibbled my ear. My free hand found the back of his neck, and I lay my cheek against his. “You feel so good.” He made a soft, pleased sound, trailing little kisses along my jaw. “So good. Mmm.”

“Want you to come inside me,” he whispered. “Please.” He said it so quietly, like a secret. I brushed a bit of hair off his damp forehead.

“How?” I asked, “Like before?”

Oliver rocked onto one elbow, scooted away, grabbed one of the pillows I wasn’t using, and lay on his stomach, his face half hidden in the cushion, gazing at me. Challenging, inviting, longing, the curve of his spine an arc I ached to run my tongue over. Ah. Like _that._

I’d do as he wanted. Of course I would. But now, emboldened, I wanted to hear it. I lifted up, saw his eyes close as I moved behind him, as he spread his thighs and pressed up and back. I leaned in and kissed his temple. “Say it.”

He gripped the pillow tighter, bit his lip so hard that I licked over his teeth so he wouldn’t hurt himself. I kissed his mouth, his cheek, his eyebrow, the closed corner of his eye, over the tiniest of laugh lines that would only deepen over time. I tapped my cock against his thigh, ran it along the crease of his ass until he moaned into the pillow. “Fuck me, Oliver,” he begged. “Oliver. Oliver. _Oliver_.”

“Elio,” I purred, gripping both those two beautiful cheeks. “Elio, Elio, Elio. You want me to make you come?” He drew in a tight breath, shoulders creeping toward his ears as he nodded. I nuzzled the back of his neck, grabbed the bottle of lube that had almost disappeared under the pillow, and sat back on my heels, spreading him. I ran a slick thumb over the tight pucker of skin, reminded vividly of the peach’s tender blush, my come dripping down the raw and sticky flesh, and I spat on him, like he had on me. “Fuck. I worship you.” 

He sobbed dryly as I pressed inside. I froze, but he shook his head, reaching back to grab the shelf of my hip. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare, give it to me. All of it. All of you.” 

_All of me wants all of you_ , I thought.

I fucked him, bit his shoulder, inhibitions gone, my thrusts sharp and short and quick. He couldn’t be quiet now, his breath one long string of broken moans punctuated by each snap of my hips. He turned his face into the pillow, his sounds muffled but swelling with delight. I was close, so close, felt him tightening around me, as he moved, backed up, backed on, backed into me. 

I was on the edge, but I wanted him with me. I didn’t know if I could do it, if I could get us there together. Oliver had worked an arm beneath his body, and I knew he was touching himself. “M'gonna come,” I huffed against his hair, and he turned his head, and there, there was that wicked smile that set my nerves alight.

“Do it,” he said, his voice breaking. “I want it. I want it. Come.”  

His voice did me in, and I came, so hard and so good, it was near-to like having the wind knocked out of me. His mouth opened, and his cry was only half lost in the pillow as he followed, pulsing around me as I pushed deeper, shaking and bucking until both of us were breathless, boneless. Spent.

 

***

 

It was Oliver who insisted we make at least a minor appearance downstairs. I had heard the house start to fill again as he and I washed up together. I splashed my face with water from the sink, but he hopped in the shower again, just for a rinse. I inched back the curtain at one point, peered into see him just standing there, with his hands over his face, hot water pelting over his broad shoulders. 

“Oliver?” 

He pulled them away and smiled sleepily. I wanted to get in with him, but thought better of it. Instead I reached for one of his hands and kissed his knuckles. I wondered, no, _knew_ how exposed he probably felt, and I was scared, scared that he would feel as raw and regretful as I had days ago. I feared the _Elio_ in him would rear his head and push me away. Widen the gap we had closed. It would be my own undoing. Like a rogue twin taking over, jumping bodies.

 

He didn’t, though. Instead he cupped his wet hand under my chin and kissed me. Took the towel I handed him. Let me keep a hand on the small of his back as we left the landing and descended the stairs. Slowed, just so I would press into him a little more. 

No one had even asked any questions, save for if I felt better. I said yes. I had just needed the lie down. Oliver smirked, peeled away from me out of necessity. He sat on the sofa beside one of my parents’ dinner guests, his charming, jovial self with a drink in his hand. I sat at the piano, pumping the pedal idly as I listened to him discuss his book with my father and his colleague from the university in the town over. At ease, excited, engaged, although now and then I caught his eyes flicker in and out of focus, like a candle flame. Into his mind, out here with us, upstairs with me, on the sofa with his hosts. Feeling with every shift, every breath, our secret.

 

I played, loose and lilting, composing rather than practicing. I lifted my gaze from the keys and saw him staring into his drink, which was almost empty. Like the outside world didn’t exist. 

I knew what he was probably feeling. He might have felt my eyes, for he looked up at that second, caught me studying him. He got up, gingerly, his gaze lingered. 

I gave him a moment’s headstart, then followed, found him in the hallway where he had found me, dropping more ice into his glass. I skimmed the back of his arm with my knuckle, and he turned at once, stepped into my space. 

I hugged him, and he sighed, sagged against me. It wouldn’t be long before we could find an excuse to go back upstairs. “I want to read some of your pages,” I said. “I love hearing you talk about your work. 

Oliver actually put his drink down and wrapped an arm around me. “I was thinking,” he said softly, “that I might have to leave for a bit.” I pulled back, shocked. Shattered. He shook his head. “No, no. Not like that. I mean…” He looked back round the corner. “Your dad’s friend is a genius, and—“

“Like, go to Bergamo? The university?”

“Yeah. Check out their library.”

“You should.” I smiled at him, but my heart was sinking. We’d have even less time than I thought. Oliver licked his lips, leaned in a little bit. His hand dropped down, out of sight, and laced his long fingers with mine. 

“I want you to come with,” he breathed. “I want to be there with you. I just…am working on how to ask.”

It was like a sucker punch to the chest. “You don’t have to ask. I’ll come with.” 

As he beamed at me, the urge to say something rose, came to the back of my teeth. Words I had not thought I was even capable of saying, one single phrase. _Speak, or die,_ I thought. I squeezed his hand. I knew he would not begrudge me for saying it, and I would not begrudge him if he didn’t say it back. But he might have. He might have said it.

I don’t know. I never found out.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've stuck around, bless you.
> 
> So many thanks and my writing hand to sheisraging, who encouraged me throughout this whole thing. Thank you to provenance for the beta. And as always, to you, for reading and commenting. thereisalwaysroom on tumblr xx


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